Patti Smith Quotes (48 Quotes)


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

    No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.

    Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

    As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.

    Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine - My sins are my own, they belong to me.


    I don't expect a big crowd. But hopefully if this first meeting is interesting the word will spread.

    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.

    The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

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


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

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

    I never thought I was gonna live to 30.

    Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.

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

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

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

    Christianity made us think there's one heaven.


    Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

    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.


    When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.

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

    I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.

    I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.

    People have the power to redeem the work of fools.

    If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer.

    Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

    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 did not comprehend and I often wonder what he ever saw in me, and it has taken me all these years to understand.

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

    I absolutely remember where I was when I first heard it. It got me through adolescence.

    I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife.

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

    Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.

    When I was younger, I also dreamed of being an opera singer, simply because of Maria Callas.

    I look at these kids, you know, and I could be their mother, their mistress, their older woman. Some of the kids at the concerts are 15.

    It was an answered prayer. The best Easter present I could ask for. When we dropped him off August 21st my prayer was 'God, please bring him back in one piece' and today my prayer was answered.

    I didn't really expect it to go anywhere.

    Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.

    It would go back and forth between the two of us and then it would go over here and bang its head on the steps trying to break the glass off.

    Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?

    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.


    I have another son that's in Iraq right now. So, it's not all the way over for us. But, if we can taste victory this time, I know it will come for us next time.

    An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.



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