Quotes By Patti Smith

Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.

Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.

Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story.

I like gettin' old.

I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.

Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.

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.

I had to learn, really, how to rein in my energies and discipline myself. And I found it very very useful. I rebelled against it at first, but it's a good thing to have.

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.

Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

A lot of my audience are in their 50s. But they want me to pretend to continue to be pretending.

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.

What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong.

Christianity made us think there's one heaven.

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.

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

An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.

First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

I am not really certain how original my contribution to music is as I am obviously an amateur.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

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

I don't think the area of Jerusalem should be part of a Jewish state; it belongs to all people, to Christians and Muslims and the Jewish people.