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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.

-Patti Smith

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New Generations Are Intoxicated

Patti Smith

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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.

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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.

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

Both Of Them Were Ahead Of Their Time, But They Didn't Live Long Enough To See The Time They Were Ahead Of.

I Didn't Have Any Career Design. I Was Not Thinking About Publishing Or Doing A Record. I Was Just Working. I Was Evolving. I Wanted To Really Comprehend What I Was Doing Before Stepping Too Far Out.

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.

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

By The Time I Was 10 Or 11, I Was Completely Demoralized. I Thought, "i'm Done. I'm Never Going To Be A Missionary," Because My Indiscretion Column, Whether It Was Little Lies Or Stealing A Chunky Bar, Kept Me From Sainthood.

I Personally Am Not Interested In People Trying To Pigeonhole Me.

These Are The Times, The Times Of Our Own, These Are The Shapes The World We Formed.

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.

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

I Think I'm Constantly In A State Of Adjustment.

People Say The Media Is Feeding The Public's Hunger For Celebrity News, But That's The Drug Pusher's Mentality. I Don't Think Anybody Would Be Pining For News About Angelina Jolie's Babies If It Weren't Being Given To Them In The First Place.

I Wanted To Remember The Original Energy; Strip Away All The Glamour And Limousines And Tons Of Drugs. I Wanted To Get Back To The Revolutionary Ideas, Merging Poetry And Rhythm And Rock And Roll.

The Sea Is Greater Than Us - It Has Its Rhythm, Its Art. It Comes With Our Earliest Memory, Of Respiration, Breathing In And Out.

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.

Maybe I'll Be 48 And Die In The Gutter In Paris.

New Generations Have Unprecedented Power To Make Great Changes. Take The Music Business For Example. The New Generations Have Toppled The Music Industry By File Sharing, Downloading, And Myspace. Rock 'n' Roll Belongs To The People.

I Always Enjoyed Doing Transgender Songs.

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.

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

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.

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

I Was Always Trying To Pick Guys Up. I'd Ask Guys Out And Stuff Like That. I Had No Pride. I Was The Biggest Lurch At Dances, Waiting For The Ladies' Choice. I'd Lunge At My Prey Like A Baby Wolf.

I Want To Keep My Life As Unfettered As Possible. So Maybe I'll Just Pretend To Get Rare Books From My Catalogue, And Not Really Get Them.

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 Think Masturbating Is A Really Important Function In Art. People Don't Like To Hear That Kind Of Stuff, But It's True.

I Use Drugs To Work. I Never Use Them To Escape Or For Pleasure. When You Turn To Drugs, All You're Doing Is Turning Inside, Anyway. I Only Use Drugs For Construction. It's Like One Of My Architectural Tools.

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.

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.

If I Have Any Regrets, I Could Say That I'm Sorry I Wasn't A Better Writer Or A Better Singer.

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

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.

In Any Performance, You're On Stage For Two Hours, And There's 40 Seconds Or Maybe A Whole Five Minutes Where You Feel Like The Whole Universe Is In Place, And You've Gone Even Beyond The Universe That You Know.

I Don't Wear Makeup. I Can't Stand Nothin' On My Face. It's A Phobia. It's Not A Platform.

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.

All The Traumas I Went Through Separating Art From Writing Don't Exist Anymore. That's Why I Love Being In Rock 'n' Roll. It's A Whole Life Thing.

Pollution Is A Necessary Result Of The Inability Of Man To Reform And Transform Waste.

...heroine: The Artist, The Premier Mistress Writhering In A Garden Graced W/highly Polished Blades Of Grass... Release (ethiopium) Is The Drug...an Animal Howl Says It All...notes Pour Into The Caste Of Freedom...the Freedom To Be Intense...to Defy Social Order And Break The Slow Kill Monotony Of Censorship. To Break From The Long Bonds Of Servitude-ruthless Adoration Of The Celestial Shepherd. Let Us Celebrate Our Own Flesh-to Embrace Not Ones Race Mais The Marathon-to Never Let Go Of The Fiery Sadness Called Desire.

I Got My Style From A Lot Of Different People, Even My Style Of Reading, Even Johnny Carson Inspired Me.

I Know I'm A Strong Performer. I'm Not An Evolved Musician.

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

To Be An Artist — Actually, To Be A Human Being In These Times — It’s All Difficult. … What Matters Is To Know What You Want And Pursue It.

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An Artist Is Somebody Who Enters Into Competition With God.

I Walk Alone, Assaulted It Seems, By Tears From Heaven.

My Father Hated Rock And Roll - Hated It. My First Real Argument With My Father Was Over The Rolling Stones. And He Never, Ever Liked Rock And Roll. He Just Liked Me.

Since I Was A Child, I Hated Having To Deal With My Hair. I Hated Having To Change My Clothes. As A Kid, I Had A Sailor Shirt And The Same Old Corduroy Pants, And That's What I Wanted To Wear Everyday.

Just Because I've Extricated Myself From Religion Doesn't Mean I'm Not Interested In The Scriptures. I Look At The Bible As Itself. It's A Holy Book, It Has Incredible Literature In It And Beautiful Poetry.

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

Christianity Made Us Think There's One Heaven.

After Writing All Day I Go For A Walk And See A Piece Of Architecture I Want To Photograph And I Have To Take A Picture And Later A Poem Comes In My Mind.

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.

Build A Good Name. Keep Your Name Clean. Don’t Make Compromises, Don’t Worry About Making A Bunch Of Money Or Being Successful. Be Concerned About Doing Good Work. Protect Your Work And If You Build A Good Name, Eventually That Name Will Be Its Own Currency. Life Is Like A Roller Coaster Ride, It Is Never Going To Be Perfect. It Is Going To Have Perfect Moments And Rough Spots, But It’s All Worth It.

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.

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.

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I'm Okay With Roaming Around The World In My Bunk For Days On End. Maybe Every Third Day I'll Get A Shower Or Stumble Out At Dawn And Realize I'm In A Field In Poland. I Like That Kind Of Life.

I Have Vague Memories, Like Impressions On Glass Plates.

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

You Don't Want To Od On Improvisation.

A Lullaby Should Be Timeless Because It's A Timeless Concept - The Birth Of The Child.

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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.

No, My Work Does Not Reflect My Sexual Preferences, It Reflects The Fact That I Feel Total Freedom As An Artist.

Good News Doesn't Necessarily Have To Be A Positive Thing. Bringing Good News Is Imparting Hope To One's Fellow Man.

It Will Not Fall Away. Man Cannot Judge It. For Art Sings Of God, And Ultimately Belongs To Him.

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.

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.

You're Not A Rock 'n' Roll Person Four Hours A Day Or Even When You're On Stage. It's Become The Rhythm Of Your Whole Life.

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

New York Is The Thing That Seduced Me.

You Can't Make A Mistake When You Improvise.

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

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

I Never Thought Of Being A Performer, Never Thought Of Being A Singer, Never Thought Of Being A Photographer. It's Just The Trajectory Of My Work. I Go To The Medium That Serves The Vision.

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.

I Always Wear The Same Thing Onstage.

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

Committing Great Work Does Not Necessarily Feed You.

I Never Had Any Dates. I Never Really Had Any Boyfriends. I Was The Girl Who Did The Guys' Homework. I Was Really Crazy About Guys But I Was Always Like One Of The Boys. The Guys I Always Fell In Love With Were Completely Inaccessible.

Pissing In A River, Watching It Rise.

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.

Make Your Interactions With People Transformational, Not Just Transactional.

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.

Spare The Child And Spoil The Rod, I Am Not Sellin' Myself To God.

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

I Love My Little Overgrown Yard. And My House Is Wonderful. It's Everything That I Need.

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.

Look At Obama - He Is Now [2015] Trying To Help Us Environmentally But He Should Have Done It Eight Years Ago. He's Trying To Salvage His Legacy And Trying To Do Something Good But We Needed For Him To Show Leadership From Day One.

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

A Lot Of Children Don't Have A Developed Aesthetic. I Did. I Made Early Choices In Life, Even About Cloth; I Liked Flannel And Not Polyester.

Everybody's Got To Reclaim These Thingspoetry, Rock'n'roll, Political Activismand It's Got To Be Done Over And Over Again. It's Like Eating: You Can't Say,'oh, I Ate Yesterday'.you Have To Eat Again.

I've Never Felt Grounded Because Of My Ancestry Or My Gender. I Think Until Women Get Away From That They're Not Going To Be Great Writers.

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.

Technology Is 50% Of Rock 'n' Roll - The Magic, The Art, The Performance. If You Don't Have Good Technicians And A Strong Road Crew Who Are Devoted And Believe In You And Protect You, You're Totally Naked.

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.

The Whole Process Of Working With Steven [sebring] And Being Filmed By Him Helped Me Psychologically To Get My Feet Back On The Ground.

We Never Had Any Children," He Said Ruefully. "our Work Was Our Children.

I Have Disciplined Myself When I'm Working. When I Discovered Art, I Realized That One Could Keep That Search Going Within Creation. But I Also Realize That In Order To Create The Art, You Have To Stay, You Can't Go Too Far.

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.

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.

Paths That Cross Will Cross Again

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.

My Mother Had No End Of Tragedy In Her Life. She Would Make Herself Get Up And Take A Deep Breath And Go Out And Do Laundry. Hang Up Sheets.

Remember, We Are Mortal, But Poetry Is Not.

Sometimes I Get Lost In Watching A Film. The Sorrow, Or The Frustration, Is When It Doesn't Happen For A Long Time.

Besides Me Wanting To Be An Artist, I Wanted To Be A Movie Star.

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

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.

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.

There's Nothing Cool About Being Self-destructive.

Self Destructive

Self Destructive Behavior

I'm A Worker. I Do The Work To Communicate, And I Want People To Embrace It, And When They Do I'm Happy.

Never Let Go Of That Fiery Sadness Called Desire.

For I Desired, As Youth Does, To Be Taken By The Hand And Hurled Into The World.

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

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

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

Will You Pretend You're My Boyfriend?

I Had A Handful Of Records, But When I Was 11 Years Old, I Liked Puccini As Much As Little Richard. They Both Made Sense To Me.

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.

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.

When I Started Making Music, We'd Lost A Lot Of Our Great People. Rock Was Moving In A Direction I Didn't Like. Rock Was My Generation's Revolutionary, Sexual, Poetic, And Political Voice, But It Had Become Corporatized. It Was Going Into Stadiums. It Was So Far Removed From Its Basic Roots.

My Sunglasses Are Like My Guitar.

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'd Try To Write My Poems In A Certain Rhythm. I Had My Rock 'n' Roll Stuff For Performing And My Denser Stuff For Writing.

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.

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

I'm Very Comfortable With Being A Female Now But When I Was A Little Kid I Only Wanted To Be A Boy. I Didn't Want To Be A Girl. I Didn't Feel Like A Man Inside... Being A Boy Was Just Cooler.

An Artist Wears His Work In Place Of Wounds.

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

I Don't Wanna Be Equal With Anybody. I Wanna Be Above Equal. I Don't Think Most People Are Equal To Me. I'd Like To Communicate With Everybody; I'd Like To Do Something Universal, I'd Like To Have The Hit Record Of The World. But That's Not The Same As Being Equal.

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

Rock & Roll Is Like A Painting. Can Great Paintings Still Be Done? It Depends On Who Holds The Brush.

I’m Not Much A Role Model In Terms Of Hair Care, Though.

I Was Quite An Insomniac. I Rarely Slept As A Child. Having God To Talk To At Night Was Nice.

The Idea Of Redemption Is Always Good News, Even If It Means Sacrifice Or Some Difficult Times.

We Were Walking Toward The Fountain, The Epicenter Of Activity, When An Older Couple Stopped And Openly Observed Us. Robert Enjoyed Being Noticed, And He Affectionately Squeezed My Hand. "oh, Take Their Picture," Said The Woman To Her Bemused Husband, "i Think They're Artists." "oh, Go On," He Shrugged. "they're Just Kids.

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.

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.

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

I Think It's Good For People To See The Positive Beauty That Can Flower From The Deepest Grieving.

I Thought To Myself That He Contained A Whole Universe That I Had Yet To Know.

I Don't Think The Area Of Jerusalem Should Be Part Of A Jewish State; It Belongs To All People, To Christians And Muslims And The Jewish People.

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.

When I Stopped Performing For 16 Years And Lived In Michigan And Was Married And Raising My Children, I Wrote About Four Or Five Books. I Haven't Published Them.

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.

That Whole Thing About Masturbating. Most Girls, I Guess Nobody Has To Tell Them, They Just Figure It Out. I Had To Be Told. Some Girl Actually Had To Show Me A Hairbrush And Demonstrate Exactly What To Do. I Just Never Figured That Stuff Out Naturally.

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.

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

The Best Thing Is To Motivate People To Do Their Own Work. I'm Not Opposed To Making Money. But I Started To Play Rock 'n' Roll To Motivate Others, To Shake Things Up, Wake People Up And To Let Other Skinny, Pimply Marginalized Weirdos Know They're Not Alone.

I Started Resenting How Much Art Robs From Life. I'd Go To A Party And I Couldn't Enjoy Myself, Even Sexually. All I Could Think Was How I Was Going To Reinvent The Experience Into A Piece Of Art.

Punk Rock Is Just Another Word For Freedom.

People Called Me The Godmother Of Punk, But I Never Name Myself Anything.

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

When I Was A Kid, I Loved Sherlock Holmes. I'm Not Interested In Crimes. I'm Interested In The Mind Of The Detective And His Process, Which To Me Is A Lot Like The Artist.

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.

Freedom Is...the Right To Write The Wrong Words.

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

No One Knows How Powerful Technology Is.

Arthur Conan Doyle Had To Be Sherlock Holmes In Order To Envision How Sherlock Holmes Would Unravel A Mystery. He Had To Be In Sherlock's Situations. As A Writer, You Have To Be Of Two Minds.

I Always Know That Everything I Do Is The Best I Could Do.

If I'm Really Working On Something, Writing Or Painting Or Really Concentrating, I Don't Even Think About Brushing My Hair.

Writing Is Not Some Quiet, Closet Act.

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.

Ultimately, We Are Not Seeking Others To Bow To, But To Reinforce Our Individual Natures, To Help Us Suffer Our Own Choices, To Guide Us On Our Own Particular Journeys.

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

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.

Ultimately, I Want To Make Everyone Horny.

I Have Loved Books All My Life. There Is Nothing More Beautiful In Our Material World Than The Book.

I Don't Think," He Insisted. "i Feel.

I Daydream A Lot - That's How I Get My Ideas. If I'm Sitting In A Café, I'm Not On My Phone Because I Want To Hear My Mind. I Think That Those Periods Of Small Solitude That We Are Really Losing Are So Important.

Sometimes You Have To Abandon Your Own Children For Other Children.

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

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 Never Felt Oppressed Because Of My Gender. When I'm Writing A Poem Or Drawing, I'm Not A Female; I'm An Artist.

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.

My Parents Had Three Kids Right After The Second World War, And We Were All Sort Of Sickly. Then I Had A Fourth Sibling, With Very Serious Asthma. The Medical Bills... So My Parents Always Struggled.

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.

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.

What Is The Impulse That Drove To Direct? To Me, It Seems So Immense. Just Having A Rock 'n' Roll Band, Or To Go From The Solitude Of Writing And To Having To Collaborate, Is Almost Schizophrenic.

Obviously, I'm Not Homeless. I'm Not An Old Alcoholic. I'm Not Jumping Trains. I Just Like To Live In A Certain Way.

We Tried Not To Age, But Time Had Its Rage.

Artists Are Traditionally Resistant To Labels.

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

We Were As Hansel And Gretel And We Ventured Out Into The Black Forest Of The World.

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

I Don't Think The Average American Understands What Patriotism Truthfully Is. That's Why When I Attack Our Country Or Attack The Government, It's Sometimes Looked At As Unpatriotic. It's Not.

He Found It Was As Easy To Hurl Beauty As Anything Else. (on Robert Mapplethorpe)

I Always Thought My Father [influenced Me Most] Because He Was So Well Read, I Tried To Model Myself On Him, But Really As I Go Through Life I Realise It Was My Mother Who Gave Me The Most Valuable Instructions. I Didn't Understand Or Accept It At The Time. She Taught Me To Read And To Pray - Two Things That Have Really Stayed With Me.

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

The Artist Seeks Contact With His Intuitive Sense Of The Gods, But In Order To Create His Work, He Cannot Stay In This Seductive And Incorporeal Realm. He Must Return To The Material World In Order To Do His Work. It's The Artist's Responsibility To Balance Mystical Communication And The Labor Of Creation.

I Understood That In This Small Space Of Time We Had Mutually Surrendered Our Loneliness And Replaced It With Trust.

For Me, Personally, I Think Drugs Are Sacred And Should Be Used For Work. That's What I Believe In. Drugs Have A Real Shamanistic Value. I Can Handle Drugs. I've Never Had A Problem.

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

[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.

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