Patti Smith Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos - the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?

Patti Smith
In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.

Patti Smith
I am the spring the holy ground
I am the seed of mystery
the thorn the veil the face of grace
the brazen image the thief of sleep
the ambassador of dreams
the prince of peace.

Patti Smith
People have the power
To redeem the work of fools
Upon the meek the graces shower
It's decreed the people rule.

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
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
Most of my heroes are men simply because most of the heaviest people in the world have been men. There hasn't been a woman who has done what Jimi Hendrix did. I don't blame that on anything; if a woman wanted to do it, she'd do it. If I wanted to do what Hendrix had done I should have learned to play the guitar ten years ago. Too bad I didn't have the discipline.

Patti Smith
What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.

Patti Smith
Look around you, all around you
Riding on a copper wave
Do you like the world around you?
Are you ready to behave?

Patti Smith
He spared the child and spoiled the rod
I have not sold myself to God!

Patti Smith
The people have the power
The power to dream to rule
To wrestle the world from fools.

Patti Smith
I got into letters, words, the rhythm of certain words together, and gradually started writing poems that were songs because of my obsession with rhythm. I love writing because there's acoustic-type typewriters and electric ones. It's a physical act, but the word is still trapped on the page.

Patti Smith
We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn't want to be without each other.

Patti Smith
Much has been said about Robert, and more will be added. Young men will adopt his gait. Young girls will wear white dresses and mourn his curls. He will be condemned and adored. His excesses damned or romanticized. In the end, truth will be found in his work, the corporeal body of the artist. It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to him.

Patti Smith
Best of everything there was
and everything there is to come
is often undocumented.

Patti Smith
Deep in my heart how the presence of you shines, in a light to last a whole life through.

Patti Smith
The things I thought would happen didn't. Things I never anticipated unfolded.

Patti Smith
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.

Patti Smith
Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste.

Patti Smith
I reflected on the fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going to achieve perfection

Patti Smith
These are the times, the times of our own, these are the shapes the world we formed.

Patti Smith
Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.

Patti Smith
Should I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted?

Patti Smith
Acknowledge all man as fellow creation, but don't follow him.

Patti Smith
Hail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.

Patti Smith
Swift is the arrow, dark is the thorn, the slate is clean, the future awaits, awake.

Patti Smith
I remember when you were born, it was dawn and the storm settled near my belly. And I rolled in the grass and spit out the gas, and I lit a match and the void went flash. And the sky split and the planets hit, balls of jade dropped and existence stopped.

Patti Smith
It drives me nuts when someone comes in and says 'Tell me your life story.' Do you have questions? I love questions, they always have the element of surprise!

Patti Smith
It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies

Patti Smith
We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark.

Patti Smith