Quotes by Patti Smith

I come from a real working class background, and I didnt know anyone sophisticated - except I saw Edie Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy!

The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all these things keeps your mind elastic.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

My mom loved rock n roll. My father hated it. We couldnt play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington.

My mom loved rock n roll. My father hated it. We couldnt play it when he was around.

Im a human being, Im a friend, Im a mom, Im a writer, and Im an artist. I do play electric guitar and all of that, but in the end, Im just a person.

Im not really a musician. Im a performer, and I love rock n roll. Ive embraced rock n roll because it encompasses all the things Im interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n roll.

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasnt vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.

The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.

What I wanted to do in rock n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock n roll was asleep.

I didnt love Jim Morrison cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new.

You cant change the world you cant fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when youre brushing your teeth. You can do small things.

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. Its freedom.

Im not afraid of terrorism at all. Im afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.

My dad got a job in a factory in Philadelphia, so I was raised in Germantown in a sort of a barracks for soldiers. They had housing for temporary housing. And then my parents saved money and bought a little house in South Jersey, built on a swamp.

“...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.”

“Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.”