Patti Smith Quotes

“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.”

“Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line.”

“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.”

“So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.”

“I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation…”

“I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond.”

“We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.”

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

“No one expected me. Everything awaited me.”

“Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.”

“Freedom is… the right to write the wrong words.”

“I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth”

“What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.”

“I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,
that Joplin had the last drunken throat,
that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.”

“Jesus died
For somebody's sins
But not mine.”

“I don't think," he insisted. "I feel.”

“Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?”

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

“We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.”

“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.”

“We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.”

“Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.”

“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.”

“I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.”

“Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.”

“I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.”

“Paths that cross will cross again.”

“Later he would say that the Church led him to God, and LSD led him to universe. He also said that art led him to the devil, and sex kept him with the devil.”

“Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”

“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.”

“How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they’re gone?”

“I wish I could just project everything on the paper”

“Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.”

“Writing is not some quiet, closet act.”

“We never had any children," he said ruefully. "Our work was our children.”

“To be an artist is to enter into competition with god.”

“Got to lose control before you take control.”

“Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.”

“Patti, did art get us?'
I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.'
Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.”

“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.”

“In time we often become one with those we once failed to understand.”

“He took twelve pictures that day.
Within a few days he showed me the contact sheet. "This one has the magic," he said.
When I look at it now, I never see me. I see us.”

“Time to travel, to acquiesce to fate.”

“He spared the child and spoiled the rod
I have not sold myself to God!”

“Life is filled with holes
Johnny's laying there in his sperm coffin
The angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy
Can't you show me nothing but surrender?”

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

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

“She is a soldier. She will not be defeated.”