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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.