Quotes by Patti Smith

• The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.
• My sunglasses are like my 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.
• Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.
• 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.
• Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
• Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.
• My mother answers all my fan mail.
• 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.
• First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
• Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
• No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.
• People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
• 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.
• In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.
• 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.
• Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
• Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?
• Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.
• In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
• I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.
• An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.
• An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
• Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
• As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.
• Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.
• Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.
• Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.
• 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.
• 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 never thought I was gonna live to 30.
• I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.
• I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
• If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer.
• Christianity made us think there's one heaven.