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Eyeing The Traffic Circulating The Lobby Hung With Bad Art. Big Invasive Stuff Unloaded On Stanley Bard In Exchange For Rent. The Hotel Is An Energetic, Desperate Haven For Scores Of Gifted Hustling Children From Every Rung Of The Ladder. Guitar Bums And Stoned-out Beauties In Victorian Dresses. Junkie Poets, Playwrights, Broke-down Filmmakers, And French Actors. Everybody Passing Through Here Is Somebody, If Not In The Outside World.

-Patti Smith

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Eyeing The Traffic Circulating

Patti Smith

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Eyeing The Traffic Circulating The Lobby Hung With Bad Art. Big Invasive Stuff Unloaded On Stanley Bard In Exchange For Rent. The Hotel Is An Energetic, Desperate Haven For Scores Of Gifted Hustling Children From Every Rung Of The Ladder. Guitar Bums And Stoned-out Beauties In Victorian Dresses. Junkie Poets, Playwrights, Broke-down Filmmakers, And French Actors. Everybody Passing Through Here Is Somebody, If Not In The Outside World.

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I Learned A Lot From Arthur Rimbaud. People Talk About How He Wanted To Be A Seer And Do That Through The Derangement Of The Senses. What They Forget Was That He Also Advocated, Sternly And Austerely, That One Must Be Able To Go Through All That - And Then Articulate It.

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.

Trust Is Everything Between Two Artists, Or Between Subject And Artist. You Have To Have Trust Or Nothing Good Will Come Out Of It.

In Fact, I Thought My Calling Was To Be A Painter.

I Longed To Read Everything I Possibly Could, And The Things I Read In Turn Produced New Yearnings.

What A Model Of An Artist Was For Me Was An Artist Who Worked. Picasso Was The Ultimate Model, Because The Work Ethic He Had.

Remember, We Are Mortal, But Poetry Is Not.

I Find It Painful When I'm Without Anything. But I Work In Multiple Fields. If I Can't Write, I Find Myself Taking Photographs. I Can Go On The Road And Perform. But The Most Important Thing For Me Is Writing, And When I Hit Those Walls, It's Painful.

I Wasn't Thinking So Much Of Music. I Wasnt Thinking So Much Of Perfection Or Stardom Or Any Of That Stuff.

Those Who Have Suffered Understand Suffering And Therefore Extend Their Hand.

The Things I Thought Would Happen Didn't. Things I Never Anticipated Unfolded.

Horses Pretty Much Broke As A Record In England.

I Love To Photograph The Tools Of One's Trade: Duncan Grant's Paintbrushes, The Typewriter Of Herman Hesse, Or Even My Own Guitar, A 1957 Fender Duo-sonic.

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.

It Was No Hardship To Me To Spend Long Hours Reading And Writing.

Toyland, Toyland . . . Once You Pass Its Portals You May Never Return Again.

I'd Never Had People Drive Me Around, And Then All Of A Sudden, If A Car Didn't Come, I'd Say, "where's My Car?"

I'm Certain, As We Filled Down The Great Staircase, That I Appeared The Same As Ever, A Moping Twelve Years-old, All Arms And Legs. But Secretly I Knew I Had Been Transformed, Moved By The Revelation That Human Beings Create Art, That To Be An Artist Was To See What Others Could Not.

Even As A Child, I Knew What I Didn't Want. I Didn't Want To Wear Red Lipstick.

In My Low Periods, I Wondered What Was The Point Of Creating Art. For Whom? Are We Animating God? Are We Talking To Ourselves? And What Was The Ultimate Goal? To Have One's Work Caged In Art's Great Zoos - The Modern, The Met, The Louvre?

There's Nothing Cool About Being Self-destructive.

Self Destructive

Self Destructive Behavior

Christianity Made Us Think There's One Heaven.

I Want To Be Around A Really Long Time. I Want To Be A Thorn In The Side Of Everything As Long As Possible.

The Film [dream Of Life] Is The Way It Is Because It Was The Rhythm Of My Life, And Also Because The Director And The Editor Are Both Gifted And Both Fine Human Beings.

Jesus Died For Somebody's Sins But Not Mine.

I Wanted To See Who This Yeats Person Was, And I Said To My Mother, 'i Want A Book By This Person.' And She Bought It For Me, And A Lot Of It Was Over My Head, But I Had It.

We Go Through Life. We Shed Our Skins. We Become Ourselves.

I Was A Lower Middle-class Kid. My Family Had No Money. There Was No Room In Our Small House Where There Were Already Four Kids, Including Myself, Living.

Those Were The Things On My Mind [stay Healthy, Take Care Of My Kids And Reestablish A Relationship With The People], Not Career, Money, Drugs, Sex, Alcohol Or Fun. Not That There's Anything Wrong With Any Of Those Things, But They Aren't In The Film [dream Of Life], Because That Wasn't My Life At The Time.

I'm An Intuitive Musician. I Have No Real Technical Skills. I Can Only Play Six Chords On The Guitar.

I Was Never A Singer, I Can't Play Any Instruments, I Had No Training. Plus, I Was Brought Up In A Time When All The Great Rock Stars Were Male. I Didn't Have Any Template For What I Was Doing. I Did What I Did Out Of Frustration And Concern.

I Don't Have An Image Of Myself, When I'm Walking Down The Street, Like I'm A Rock Star Or Something. I'm A Human Being, I'm A Friend, I'm A Mom, I'm A Writer, And I'm An Artist. I Do Play Electric Guitar And All Of That But In The End I'm Just A Person. I Really Don't Live Like A Rock Star, Economically Or Socially. I Still Live A Pretty Simple Life Beside The Traveling Aspect Of It.

Pissing In A River, Watching It Rise.

The Bible Is Very Resonant. It Has Everything, Creation, Betrayal, Lust, Poetry, Prophecy, Sacrifice. All Great Things Are In The Bible And All Great Writers Have Drawn From It And More Than People Realise, Whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville Or Bob Dylan. Of Course There Are Stories That Are Still Relevant And Inspiring; Lessons That Need To Be Taught Over And Over Again. And They Give People Hope.

The New Artists Coming Through Were Very Materialistic And Hollywood, Not So Engaged In Communication.

Got To Lose Control Before You Take Control.

Writing Is Not Some Quiet, Closet Act.

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.

There Are So Many Great 19th-century Photographers, And It's Really My Favorite Period, But The Amateurs Did Such Beautiful Work.

I Think Some Of That Hopelessness Of My Generation Got Passed On To Later Generations - The Sense Of Uselessness.

Art Is By Nature Optimistic. Art Is Optimistic Because It Is Alive.

I Believe We All Have A Unique Journey, Whether Its A Journey Of Pure Energy, If There's Any Intelligence Within The Journey. But I Think Each Of Us Have Our Own Way Of Dissipating Or Entering A New Field.

I Started Going To Bible School Really Early In Life. Being Raised A Jehovah's Witness, I Had To Read The Bible Over And Over. These Stories Were So Horrifying And Really Difficult To Reconcile. For Me, Noah Wasn't The Story Of The Graham Cracker Box With The Little Animals It Was Horrifying. I Would Ask The Same Questions As A Child. "well, What About The Little Kids? What About The Dogs And Cats?"

My Public Life Was So Demanding That I Wasn't Doing The Things That I Deemed The Most Important.

As A Child I Was Such An Intense Daydreamer; I Could Be So Gone That I Had To Be Smacked To Come Back. They Were Really Worried That I Had Some Kind Of Catatonia Or Something Because I Would Go So Far Out. Because All I Wanted To Do Was Talk To God As A Child.

If Your Label Won't Let You Have The Cover You Want Or Sing The Songs You Want, Then Leave!

Should I Pursue A Path So Twisted? Should I Crawl Defeated And Gifted?

Unanswered Questions

I Think Really That's Just The Basic Christian Lesson That Sometimes Takes Us Years And Years To Understand - Have Equal Concern For Another Human Being As You Have For Yourself Or Perhaps Even More Concern For Another Human Being Than You Have For Yourself.

Hail Brother, The Distant Thunder Is Nothing But Hearts Beating As One.

We Learned We Wanted Too Much. We Could Only Give From The Perspective Of Who We Were And What We Had. Apart, We Were Able To See With Even Greater Clarity That We Didn’t Want To Be Without Each Other.

I Don't Think People Should Do Biopics Of Living People. I'm Totally Opposed To That.

I'm From South Jersey: The Idea Of Eating A Roll With Olive Oil And Anchovies Or Some Kind Of Sardine And Drinking Mint Tea Definitely Comes From Reading Paul Bowles.

My Father Was A Dreamy Fellow - He Read Plato And Socrates And Watched Phillies Games.

Social Media Could Be Very Strong In Terms Of Bringing People Together But It Also Takes Up So Much Of People's Time That I Wonder If We've Lost The Ability To Daydream.

Lets 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.

My Father Was Always Talking About God, And I Idolized My Father, So I'd Spend Hours Trying To Have Mental Telepathy With God.

Will You Pretend You're My Boyfriend?

Sometimes [people] Seem To Think I Came Out Of The Womb, You Know, Cursing, With An Electric Guitar.

Swift Is The Arrow, Dark Is The Thorn, The Slate Is Clean, The Future Awaits, Awake.

The Two Things That Constantly Inspired Me Were Books And Travel.

I Wanted To Go To Portland Because It's A Really Good Book Town.

Steven [sebring] Was Documenting Me As A Widow With Two Children, Going From 50 To 60 Years Old. My Focus, During That Time, Was To Rediscover Myself, Stay Healthy, Take Care Of My Kids And Reestablish A Relationship With The People.

When I Was Young, I Knew William Burroughs Really Well. And William's Secret Desire, Which He Never Quite Did, Was To Write A Straightforward Detective Novel.

Why Do People Want To Know Exactly Who I Am? Am I A Poet? Am I This Or That? I've Always Made People Wary. First They Called Me A Rock Poet. Then I Was A Poet That Dabbled In Rock. Then I Was A Rock Person Who Dabbled In Art.

If You Over-plan, You Close The Door On Possibilities.

People Have The Power To Redeem The Work Of Fools.

People Don't Realize We Have These Built-in Seven-league Boots. The Body Can Go Anywhere. It Is Physically Capable Of Sustaining Almost Any Kind Of Abuse, Or Any Dream.

...my Camera Is My Friend, And I Take It Everywhere.

New York Is The Thing That Seduced Me.

Nothing Is A Hobby - Each Discipline Is Its Own World With Its Own High Standards. Of Course, Every Artist Has 'minor Works' That They Do, But I Don't Think I Have Any 'minor Disciplines.'

Deep In My Heart How The Presence Of You Shines, In A Light To Last A Whole Life Through.

I Always Hesitate When People Call Me A Musician.i Have Had No Musical Training. I Can't Play Anything. I Really Think Of Myself As A Performer. It's Always Been Writing For Me. I Evolved With My Band In Rock 'n' Roll Through Poetry, Not Through Music.

That's What Artists Do, That's What Poets Do - We All Do It. We Start With Something, And Sometimes We Destroy Everything That We've Made In Order To Get To The Core Place Where We Started From.

A Good Artist's Always Got His Hand In His Zipper.

Steven's [sebring] Presence Was Not Threatening; He Told Me That If I Never Wanted The Footage To Be Seen By Anyone, He Would Give It To Me. So I Had Nothing To Lose And Everything To Gain, And What I Gained Was His Supportive Energy And The Supportive Energy Of His Wife, Who Was Sometimes The One Schlepping The Equipment Or Doing The Sound.

The Way Our Big Cities Change Sucks. The Beauty Of Cities Was That They Were Edgy, Sometimes Even A Little Dangerous. Artists, Poets, And Activists Could Come And Unify And Create Different Kinds Of Scenes. Not Just Fashion Scenes, Scenes That Were Politically Active. Big Cities Are Getting So High-end Oriented, Business Corporate Fashion, Fashion Not In An Artistic Sense But In A Corporate Sense. For Me That Edgy Beauty Of Cities Is Lost, Wherever You Go.

I Like Photographing Dresses In Windows. I Actually Wore A Lot Of Dresses In The '70s. I Like Them On Other People Now.

I'm Right Here Right Now And I Want Now To Be The Golden Age ...if Only Each Generation Would Realize That The Time For Greatness Is Right Now When They're Alive ... The Time To Flower Is Now.

Please, No Matter How We Advance Technologically, Please Don't Abandon The Book. There Is Nothing In Our Material World More Beautiful Than The Book.

When I'm On My Own With My Camera, Taking These Pictures, It Feels As If I Am In A Room Of My Own, A Self-contained World.

I Always Wanted To Be An Artist, Writer And Poet Since I Was Seven, And One Has To Live Long Enough To Evolve As An Artist And Do One's Finest Work.

It Got To The Point Where I Started Hiding Because I Didn't Want To Be Photographed. (on Living With Robert Mapplethorpe)

I Think That There Is An Air Of Experience And Aesthetic Sophistication That Weaves In With The Amateur Aspects Of The Film [dream Of Life]; It Gives The Film A Certain Elegance.

I Actually Had Another Motivation For Letting Steven [sebring] Film Us. After I'd Been Out Of The Public Eye For 16 Years, Lost My Friends And Lost My Husband, Some Of My Confidence Had Been Undermined. Steven Made The Process Of Filming Fun; I Could Pretend That We Were In Something Like Don't Look Back.

All I've Ever Wanted, Since I Was A Child, Was To Do Something Wonderful.

I Think Guys Are More Emotional. Men Are Supposed To Be The Strong Ones, They Have Pressure On Them To Be Strong, But When It Comes To Sex Men Are Much More Emotional Than Women.

The Issue Of Gender Was Never My Biggest Concern; My Biggest Concern Was Doing Good Work. When The Feminist Movement Really Got Going, I Wasn't An Active Part Of It Because I Was More Concerned With My Own Mental Pursuits.

I Don't Think Anything Can Prepare You For One's Losses.

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.

What I Wanted To Do In Rock'n'roll Was Merge Poetry With Sonic Scapes, And The Two People Who Had Contributed So Much To That Were Jimi Hendrix And Jim Morrison.

I Dreamed Of Having A Book Of My Own, Of Writing One That I Could Put On A Shelf.

Finally, By The Sea, Where God Is Everywhere, I Gradually Calmed.

Acknowledge All Man As Fellow Creation, But Don't Follow Him.

I'm More Concerned With The Work People Do Than Their Gender. When I Was Younger, I Was Pretty Judgmental. Things Had To Be A Certain Way. Now I Just Want To See The Work. It Doesn't Matter Who Does It.

I Loved Books; I Read My Childhood Away. I Was More Interested In My Interior World.

Sure I Destroyed My Guitar At Every Concert, But It Was Okay, Because I'd Always Get A Shiny New One The Very Next Day.

I Started Thinking What Could Happen With My Art And I Realized That The Biggest Thing That Could Is That It Winds Up In A Museum. It's Like Finding A Rare Animal And Putting It In The Zoo.

I Know From An Early Age That I'm Very Comfortable In Front Of People. When I Was A Young Girl, I'd Love Giving Book Reports.

I Had This Idea That The Coolest Thing That Could Happen To You Was Talking With God.

I'm An Artist. I'm Interested In How Art Gets Made.

I Felt Alien My Whole Life But I Didn't Feel Alien Because Of My Gender. Other People Made Me Aware Of My Gender.

I'm Pretty Moral About What I Do. If I Didn't Think I Was Worthy Of Doing Something, I Wouldn't Do It. I Ain't Gonna Waste A Bunch Of People's Time.

I Wasn't A Stranger To Hard Times. I Used To Read The Bible - Well, I Still Do, But When I Was Young I Read The Bible Quite A Bit.

Usually When I Go To A Place For The First Time, Unless There's Something Historical Or Spectacular That Nature Has To Offer, The First Thing I Like To Do Is See What's On The Minds Of The People.

People Say Hello To Me. I Mean, Sometimes The Sanitation Truck Goes By And Says, Hey Patti.

I Always Wear The Same Thing Onstage.

John Coltrane, He Talks To God. He Starts Playing His Solo, He Might Play For 14 Minutes. For 14 Minutes, It Seems Like He's Talking To God, But He Always Takes A Hold Of The Melody.

One Thing I Like About Getting Older Is Things, Your Spectrum Widens, Your Capacity For Compassion Widens.

An Artist Wears His Work In Place Of Wounds.

I Didn't Waste My Time On Things I Didn't Love.

Wasting My Time

I Like Making Records Right Now 'cause I Can Express Myself That Way In A Very Immediate, Physical Sense. You Can Always Write A Book, But You Can't Always Do A Rock 'n' Roll Record That's Gonna Work.

Hopefully If You Create Something Fine, People Will Relate To It, So You're Communicating With People, And You're Not In A Void. On The Other Hand, Because You're Always Creating And Transforming, Art Always Separates You - Always.

Outside Of Society, If You're Looking That's Where You'll Find Me.

I Would Always Say To Anyone, You Make Choices That Are Important To You. Don't Allow Yourself To Be Exploited By Something As Fleeting As Fame And Fortune. If You're Presenting Yourself In A Way That Important To You In Communicating Your Vision, Then So Be It. No One Should Allow Themselves To Be Exploited Ever.

Rock N' Roll Is Dream Soup, What's Your Brand?

He Dreamed Of Amassing Musicians From All Over The World In Woodstock And They Would Sit In A Field In A Circle And Play And Play. It Didn't Matter What Key Or Tempo Or What Melody, They Would Keep On Playing Through Their Discordance Until They Found A Common Language.

The Moment Of Creative Impulse Is What An Artist Gives You. You Look At A Pollock, And It Can't Give You The Tools To Do A Painting Like That Yourself, But In Doing The Work, Pollock Shares With You The Moment Of Creative Impulse That Drove Him To Do That Work.

I Wasn't Attractive, I Wasn't Very Verbal, I Wasn't Very Smart In School. I Wasn't Anything That Showed The World I Was Something Special, But I Had This Tremendous Hope All The Time. I Had This Tremendous Spirit That Kept Me Going... I Was A Happy Child, Because I Had This Feeling That I Was Going To Go Beyond My Body Physical... I Just Knew It.

I Was So Involved In My Boy-rhythms That I Never Came To Grips With The Fact That I Was A Girl. I Was Twelve Years Old When My Mother Took Me Inside And Said, "you Can't Be Outside Wrestling Without A T-shirt On." It Was A Trauma.

When I Was A Teenager, I Had Trouble Getting A Boyfriend, So I Imagined Arthur Rimbaud Or Bob Dylan As My Boyfriend.

I Hate To Be Enclosed. I Don't Like Bathroom Doors - I Don't Shut Them. In Fact, In My House, I Have No Doors.

You Can't Make A Mistake When You Improvise.

From Very Early On In My Childhood - Four, Five Years Old - I Felt Alien To The Human Race. I Felt Very Comfortable With Thinking I Was From Another Planet, Because I Felt Disconnected - I Was Very Tall And Skinny, And I Didn't Look Like Anybody Else, I Didn't Even Look Like Any Member Of My Family.

My Mission Is To Communicate, To Wake People Up, Just To Give Them My Energy And Accept Theirs.

I Didn't Begin My Life In 1975 With 'horses.' I Recorded 'horses' In 1975, But Was Drawing In Paris In 1969.

I Studied The Bible Seriously Until I Was Young Teenager. It Was Always Part Of Our Home Education: Talking About The Bible, Arguing About The Bible, Interpreting It. So I Don't Connect Prayer Or Scriptures With Any Particular Religion So It's Not A Contradiction In My Life.

New Generations Are Intoxicated With The Idea That They Can Make Their Presence Known On The Internet. When I Was Young, There Wasn't Anything Comparable. Very Few Got Their Picture In A Magazine, Fewer Made Records. We Have To Stand Back And Let Them Get Their Footing. Hopefully They'll Come To The Realization That The Most Important Thing Is Their Work And How They Conduct Themselves.

[steven Sebring] Presence Was Also Nice For My Children, Who, Having Just Lost Their Father, Quite Naturally Craved Warm Male Attention. They Gravitated To Him Right Away.

My Father Came A Couple Of Times, But He Always Blamed His Hearing Loss On My Loud Amplifiers. So He Didn't Come Anymore, But I Had His Support.

I'm Estranged From Social Media And I Don't Really Deal With It. I Tried To Work On A Website And It Took Up All My Time. People Wanted Me To Have A Twitter Account And I Spent The Whole Day Figuring Out What Would Be The First Message. I Still Haven't Wrapped My Head Around It.

More Than Anything That's Been The Thread Through My Life - The Desire To Write, The Impulse To Write. I Mean, It's Taken Me Other Places, But It Was The Impulse To Write That Led Me To Singing.

I Have Seen A Lifetime Of Transgender People And It Was Hard Enough Being Gay In The '50s And Early '60s. One Couldn't Imagine The Cruelty That Trans People Had To Face Back Then.

When You Do Controversial Work, You're Going To Upset A Certain Amount Of People.

People Need Space To Air Out Their Thoughts, To Have A Sense Of Themselves - Unfettered By Anything.

When I Was Home, Traditionally Since I Was Young, I'd Write In Cafés. That Was The Romantic Notion In 1963. Café Atmospheres Back Then Were Different. The Café Life Really Stemmed From The Parisians' Idea Of It, With Poets Struggling Over Their Poems And Drinking Coffee. No Music, No Sounds, Maybe A Little Jazz, Or Soul, But Mostly Nothing. Now You Go Into A Café And The Music Is Really Loud, People Are Having Business Meetings, They Are On Their Cellphones. It Changes From Generation To Generation.

Some Of Us Are Born Rebellious. Like Jean Genet Or Arthur Rimbaud, I Roam These Mean Streets Like A Villain, A Vagabond, An Outcast, Scavenging For The Scraps That May Perchance Plummet Off Humanity's Dirty Plates, Though Often Sometimes Taking A Cab To A Restaurant Is More Convenient.

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.

You Can't Work On That Scale Without Trust. I Learned That From Working With Robert Mapplethorpe.

My Mother Loved Rock And Roll. She Loved High-energy Music.

I Like My Time On Earth. And No Matter What Kind Of Cards I've Been Dealt, I'm Happy To Be There.

When I Perform, I Always Opt For Communication With God, And In Pursuit Of Communicating With God, You Can Enter Some Very Dangerous Territory. I Also Have Come To Realize That Total Communication With God Is Physical Death.

I Am Not Really Certain How Original My Contribution To Music Is As I Am Obviously An Amateur.

The Truth Is, No Matter How Modest Steven [sebring] Is, He Was Obsessed With The Outcome Of The Film [dream Of Life]. Every Single Frame Was Important To Him.

Everything Distracted Me, But Most Of All Myself.

Music Television Is All About The Media-oriented Version Of What It Is To Be A Rock Star; It's Not About What Bob Dylan Or Jimi Hendrix Were About - Which Included Great Images, Sure, But They Had Spiritual And Political And Revolutionary Content, Too.

I Worked For Hillary [clinton] When I Was Young - When She Was Running For The Senate. I Was Fundraising And Things, I See All Of These People As Political In A Way That Isn't Humanistic. I'm Just Watching And Hoping That Someone Is Going To Distinguish Himself Or Herself As Comprehending What We Need.

The Film [dream Of Life] Looks At A Time In My Life.

What I've Always Tried To Do Is To Express The Highest Point Of Me, And Rock 'n' Roll Is The First And The Most Open Form Created By Our Generation. The Cool Thing About It Is That You Get The Power, You Get The Rhythm; You Can Be Taken Over Sexually, You Can Be Taken Over Cerebrally; It's Great To Look At - It's A Package Deal.

There Were Days, Rainy Gray Days, When The Streets Of Brooklyn Were Worthy Of A Photograph, Every Window The Lens Of A Leica, The View Grainy And Immobile. We Gathered Our Colored Pencils And Sheets Of Paper And Drew Like Wild, Feral Children Into The Night, Until, Exhausted, We Fell Into Bed. We Lay In Each Other's Arms, Still Awkward But Happy, Exchanging Breathless Kisses Into Sleep.

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.

All I've Ever Wanted To Do Was Create Freedom.

The Film [dream Of Life], In The End, Is Life-affirming, And I Think It's Always Useful For People To Be Reminded That No Matter How Rough Things Get, No Matter What Kind Of Twists And Turns Our Lives Can Take, We Can Keep Going, We Can Create Something New.

A Writer, Or Any Artist, Can’t Expect To Be Embraced By The People [but] You Just Keep Doing Your Work - Because You Have To, Because It’s Your Calling.

I Think It's Important For People To Realize That We Were All Young, All Naive, And Also We Had Lived In A Time That Had Magic.

It's No Secret - I Love Detective Fiction. One Of The Reasons I Love Being In London Is Because I Like To Watch All The Shows On Tv. I Watch Them All.

America Is Run By Corporations, It Is Run By Banks And Wall Street. That's Why We Can't Get Guns Under Control. It's Because All These Lobbyists Don't Want Gun Control, They Don't Want Us To Have Strong Environmental Safety Guards. Young People Can Become Aware Of That And They Are The Most Powerful Lobby. With A Click Of A Text, You Can Have Millions Of People Voting For One Person.

As Much As I Can, As Much As I Can Afford, I Keep Ticket Prices Down. Rock 'n' Roll Was Developed As The People's Voice, The People's Art, It Was Grassroots. I Don't Believe That The People Should Be Estranged From Their Rock Stars. They're Not Kings And Queens - All Rock Stars Are Those Who Are Able To Give Back A Bit Of Culture To Other People. It's People's Heritage.

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.

I'm Not Saying I Wasn't Flawed Or Amateurish. But You Can Never Say I Did Anything To Appease The Music Business.

I Think The Film [dream Of Life] Is Life-affirming.

Grief Starts To Become Indulgent, And It Doesn't Serve Anyone, And It's Painful. But If You Transform It Into Remembrance, Then You're Magnifying The Person You Lost And Also Giving Something Of That Person To Other People, So They Can Experience Something Of That Person.

I Was Horny, But I Was Innocent 'cause I Was A Real-late Bloomer And Not Particularly Attractive. In Fact, Homely.

I Don't Know Why, The Very First Word On My Very First Record Is 'jesus.' I Still Invoke Him As An Entity To Reckon With.

Most Women Writers Don't Interest Me Because They're Hung Up With Being A Woman, They're Hung Up With Being Jewish, They're Hung Up With Being Somebody Or Other. Rather Than Just Going, Just Spurting, Just Creating.

I Really Feel Concerned About Young People Within Our Present Culture. Our Present Culture, We Have To Change. Change Is Inevitable And I Wasn't Raised In Our Present Culture But It Has Great Pressure That As A Young Person I Never Had. Material Pressure, Social Pressure, Visual Pressure, How You Look, And I Just Try To Appeal To Young People To Think For Themselves, To Be Their Own Person, And To Ask Questions And Also Be Very Attentive To Our Planet And Our Environment.

Life Is An Adventure Of Our Own Design Intersected By Fate And A Series Of Lucky And Unlucky Accidents.

I've Always Thrived On The Encouragement Of Others.

Sometimes You Write Passages That Don't Need To Be Rewritten. Performance Is That For Me. Improvisation, Things That Happen In The Moment, Are Sometimes Wonderful, Or Wonderful As A Moment To Be Shared Between Performer And People, But That's It. There Might Be A Strong Bond Between You And The People, A Transformative Night, But As A Live Record It Might Not Translate.

My Mission Is To Communicate, To Wake People Up, To Give Them My Energy And Accept Theirs. We're All In It Together, And I Respond Emotionally As A Worker, A Mother, An Artist, And A Human Being With A Voice. We All Have A Voice. We Have The Responsibility To Exercise It, To Use It.

New York Is The Thing That Seduced Me. New York Is The Thing That Formed Me. New York Is The Thing That Deformed Me. New York Is The Thing That Perverted Me. New York Is The Thing That Converted Me. And New York Is The Thing That I Love Too.

I've Written A Lot Of Prose. I Just Haven't Published It.

I Just Know That Young People Suffer, And I Also Know Music Is One Of The Things That Help You Get Through - Music And Friends.

I Had No Proof That I Had The Stuff To Be An Artist, Though I Hungered To Be One.

I Could Have A Job As A Teacher Because I Like Talking In Front Of People.

What Helps Me Is Watching Other People Negotiate Loss. I Think About How We Dropped A Bomb On People In Hiroshima And 150,000 People Were Killed In One Night. Those People Had To Mourn And They Had To Rebuild Their City Right Away.

One Day We’ll Go In Together, And The Work Will Be Ours.

We Have To Believe, As Creators - Just Like A Doctor Doing Heart Surgery Has To Believe That He Can Save That Person's Life. You Have To Believe That Your Pursuit Is Not Just A Noble Pursuit, But A Necessary And Inborn Pursuit To Uncover Something.

I Have Great Respect For My Parents. I Got Such Beautiful Things From Both Of Them. It Doesn't Mean That We Didn't Have Our Rough Times, But They Were Remarkable People Who Were Open-minded, Creative And Hard-working, And Had Great Senses Of Humor.

I Think I Work In Two Worlds. I'll Always Try To Kick Through A Wall. I Did That When I Was Younger And I Still Have My Way Of Doing That.

I Remember When You Were Born, It Was Dawn And The Storm Settled Near My Belly. And I Rolled In The Grass And Spit Out The Gas, And I Lit A Match And The Void Went Flash. And The Sky Split And The Planets Hit, Balls Of Jade Dropped And Existence Stopped.

I'm Here Right Now And I Want Now To Be The Greatest Time.

Angel Looks Down At Him And Says, “oh, Pretty Boy, Can't You Show Me Nothing But Surrender?

I Think Its Very Important That We Enjoy Our Life, That We Get Everything We Can Out Of It.

People Came At Me With All Sorts Of Offers, Wanting To Make Me Into A Hard-core Cher. I Had No Desire For Any Amount Of Money To Be Reformed For Someone's Vision, Because In The End, That's What You Got: Your Clay In Someone Else's Hands.

We Believe We Will Raise The Sky, We Got To Fly Over The Land, Over The Sea. Fate Unwinds And If We Die, Souls Arise. God, Do Not Seize Me Please.

My Parents Were Very Well Read. They Were Both New Englanders, Not Highly Educated, But They Had A Sophisticated... They Were Both Very Humanistic, And They Were Sophisticated Readers.

I Like Energy. I Like To Feel It Cracklin', I Like Sexual Energy In A Room, And I Like Tension.

The Hand Above Turns Those Leaves Of Loves, All In All A Timeless View. Each Dream Of Life Flung From Paradise Everlasting, Ever New.

I Feel About Politics The Same Way I Do About Religion: I Find The Best I Can From Different Things.

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.

I Always Enjoyed Doing Transgender Songs.

I Just Like Living In Certain Atmospheres. Or I Just Like People As They Are.

Light Inspires Me. I'm Drawn To Architecture, Often Graves, Statues, Trees - Things Usually That Are Quite Still. I've Been Taking Pictures Continuously Since 1995 Until The End Of Polaroid Film. I'm Taking Very Few Pictures Nowadays Because I Have Very Little Film Left, Most Of It Expired.

I've Embraced Rock 'n' Roll Because It Encompasses All The Things I'm Interested In: Poetry, Revolution, Sexuality, Political Activism - All Of These Things Can Be Found In Rock 'n' Roll. But I Am Also Engaged In All Of These Things Separately.

If Someone Didn't Want To Be Filmed, Or My Children Said, "don't Film Me Anymore," [steven Sebring] Didn't Try To Sneak A Shot Or Cajole Them; He Just Respected Their Wishes.

With The Death Of Robert Mapplethorpe, I Had Lost My Main Collaborator In Taking Photographs. So I Didn't Know Who To Work With.

The Only Parts I Like Out Of Any Of Those Women Books Is The Dirty Parts. But I Don't Think Their Dirty Parts Are Any Good, Really.

Yet You Could Feel A Vibration In The Air, A Sense Of Hastening. It Had Started With The Moon, Inaccessible Poem That It Was. Now Men Had Walked Upon It, Rubber Treads On A Pearl Of The Gods. Perhaps It Was An Awareness Of Time Passing, The Last Summer Of The Decade. Sometimes I Just Wanted To Raise My Hands And Stop. But Stop What? Maybe Just Growing Up.

I'm Not A Critic. I'm Not A Journalist. I'm Not A Philosopher. Arguing That Punk Has Run Its Course Is Like Saying Painting Ran Its Course After The Renaissance. Punk Is An Idea. It's Freedom. And It'll Be Around 200 Years From Now For The People Who Want It.

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