The Best Patti Smith quotes

Writing is not some quiet, closet act. — Patti Smith

I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf. — Patti Smith

It was no hardship to me to spend long hours reading and writing. — Patti Smith

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I’m writing a poem or drawing, I’m not a female; I’m an artist. — Patti Smith

If I’m really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don’t even think about brushing my hair. — Patti Smith

What is the impulse that drove to direct? To me, it seems so immense. Just having a rock ‘n’ roll band, or to go from the solitude of writing and to having to collaborate, is almost schizophrenic. — Patti Smith

I’d try to write my poems in a certain rhythm. I had my rock ‘n’ roll stuff for performing and my denser stuff for writing. — Patti Smith

After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind. — Patti Smith

All the traumas I went through separating art from writing don’t exist anymore. That’s why I love being in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a whole life thing. — Patti Smith

I wasn’t taking drugs or drinking. I was working and working and working. But I wasn’t writing anything. — Patti Smith

I don’t consider writing a quiet, closet act. I consider it a real physical act. When I’m home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy. I move like a monkey. I’ve wet myself, I’ve come in my pants writing. — Patti Smith

Oh, to be reborn within the pages of a book. — Patti Smith

M Train’ is as close to knowing what I’m like as anything. I don’t know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose. — Patti Smith

My great quandary was what coat to wear and which books to bring. — Patti Smith

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book. — Patti Smith

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book. — Patti Smith

I may not know what is in your mind, but I know how your mind works. — Patti Smith

We never had any children,’ he said ruefully. ‘Our work was our children. — Patti Smith

We would work side by side for hours, in a state of mutual concentration. — Patti Smith

People have the power to redeem the work of fools. — Patti Smith

I didn’t know Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, but I was affected by both of their deaths because I admired their work so much and mourned their youth and work they would never produce. — Patti Smith

I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side. — Patti Smith

I like making records right now ’cause I can express myself that way in a very immediate, physical sense. You can always write a book, but you can’t always do a rock ‘n’ roll record that’s gonna work. — Patti Smith

What will happen to us?’ I asked. ‘There will always be us,’ he answered. — Patti Smith

W]ithout a doubt we sometimes eclipse our own dreams with reality. — Patti Smith

I knew he didn’t love me, but I adored him anyway. — Patti Smith

I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something. — Patti Smith

When we awoke he greeted me with his crooked smile, and I knew he was my knight. — Patti Smith

When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William’s secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel. — Patti Smith

I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart. — Patti Smith

We promised that we’d never leave one another again, until we both knew we were ready to stand on our own. And this vow, through everything we were yet to go through, we kept. — Patti Smith

Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick. — Patti Smith

He wasn’t certain whether he was a good or bad person. Whether he was altruistic. Whether he was demonic. But he was certain of one thing. He was an artist. And for that he would never apologize. — Patti Smith

Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody–Paris for me was a Mecca. — Patti Smith

As a citizen, hopefully I’m humanist. As an artist, I’m free. — Patti Smith

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God. — Patti Smith

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one. — Patti Smith

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn’t know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch. — Patti Smith

Let’s just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built–in sense of duty. — Patti Smith

But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revalation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not. — Patti Smith

I know I’m a strong performer. I’m not an evolved musician. — Patti Smith

I didn’t write about aspects of my public life because that’s a small part of my life. — Patti Smith

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

Within that moment was trust, compassion, and our mutual sense of irony. He was carrying death within him and I was carrying life. We were both aware of that, I know. — Patti Smith

I didn’t begin my life in 1975 with ‘Horses.’ I recorded ‘Horses’ in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969. — Patti Smith

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. — Patti Smith

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go. — Patti Smith

In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all. — Patti Smith

In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen–a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children–I learned a lot. — Patti Smith