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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.

-Patti Smith

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When I Started Making

Patti Smith

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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.

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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.

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

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I Reflected On The Fact That No Matter How Good I Aspired To Be, I Was Never Going To Achieve Perfection

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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.

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

I Still Don't Want To Be Put In The Feminist Bag. I'm A Humanist.

Robert Was Concerned With How To Make The Photograph, And I With How To Be The Photograph.

...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.

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.

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.

I Got Over The Loss Of His Desk And Chair, But Never The Desire To Produce A String Of Words More Precious Than The Emeralds Of Cortés.

Wisdom Was A Teapot, Pouring From Above. Desolation Angels, Served It Up With Love.

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

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.

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

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've Lost Lots Of Men In My Life, Besides My Mother, Which Is A Whole Different Loss.

New York Is The Thing That Seduced Me.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Why Can't I Write Something That Would Awake The Dead? That Pursuit Is What Burns Most Deeply.

Your Soul Was Like A Network Of Spittle.

In The '50s You Had To Wear Pink Ribbons If You Were A Girl, And You Were Supposed To Become A Hairdresser Or A Secretary. I Couldn't Stomach It. Later On, When I Fell In Love With My Husband And Had Children, That's When My Mother's Earthiness Or Sense Of Femaleness Kicked In.

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.

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'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.

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 Was So Used To Doing Art That My Fingers Were Like Albino Spiders. So It Was Just Natural For Me To Go To A Typewriter And Write Poetry.

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Hung-up Women Can't Produce Anything But Mediocre Art, And There Ain't No Room For Mediocre Art.

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I Gave You A Wrist Watch, Baby, And You Wouldn't Even Give Me The Time Of Day.

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

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The Film [dream Of Life] Doesn't Hide Anything, Except Maybe Moments Of Sorrow Or Darkness That Belonged To Me.

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

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I'm Not Really A Musician. I'm A Performer And I Love Rock 'n' Roll.

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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.

New York Has Closed Itself Off To The Young And The Struggling. But There Are Other Cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City Has Been Taken Away From You. So My Advice Is: Find A New City.

People Like Beauty And Purity. They Pretend That's What It's All About.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Horses Pretty Much Broke As A Record In England.

I Can't Judge How Another Person Does Their [music] Work. Everyone Has A Choice And The Music Industry Is Much More Open That It Was When I Was Younger. Certain Things Are Gone, Others Have Developed, But Everyone Makes Their Choices. Pop Music Has Always Been About The Mainstream And What Appeals To The Public. I Don't Feel It's My Place To Judge. I Just Look At Things As A Fan, I Like Or Or I Don't Like It.

I Knew If I Lived Long Enough I Would Be Poet Laureate Of Something.

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

Much Has Been Said About Robert, And More Will Be Added. Young Men Will Adopt His Gait. Young Girls Will Wear White Dresses And Mourn His Curls. He Will Be Condemned And Adored. His Excesses Damned Or Romanticized. In The End, Truth Will Be Found In His Work, The Corporeal Body Of The Artist. It Will Not Fall Away. Man Cannot Judge It. For Art Sings Of God, And Ultimately Belongs To Him.

Remember, We Are Mortal, But Poetry Is Not.

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

Punk Rock Is Just Another Word For Freedom.

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.

Grief Isn't All Tears.

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.

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.

Americans Just Don't Know What Being A Movie Star's All About.

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

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

I Never Really Wanted To Be A Singer - Not With Any Longevity. But I Always Wanted To Be A Writer.

I Don't Know About That. I'm Not A Very Analytical Person. I Have Various Impulses. I've Often Quoted Walt Whitman's Phrase "i Contain Multitudes." I Understand That.

Artists Are Traditionally Resistant To Labels.

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

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.

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

An Artist Wears His Work In Place Of Wounds.

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

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

I Came Into Music Because I Thought The Presentation Of Poetry Wasn't Vibrant Enough. So I Merged Improvised Poetry With Basic Rock Chords.

I Think Its Very Important To Not Be Afraid To Experience Joy In The Middle Of Sorrow.

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.

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.

My Small Torrent Of Words Dissipated Into An Elaborate Sense Of Expanding And Receding. It Was My Entrance Into The Radiance Of Imagination. This Process Was Especially Magnified Within The Fevers Of Influenza, Measles, Chickenpox, And Mumps. I Got Them All And With Each I Was Privileged With A New Level Of Awareness. Lying Deep Within Myself, The Symmetry Of A Snowflake Spinning Above Me, Intensifying Through My Lids, I Seized A Most Worthy Souvenir, A Shard Of Heaven’s Kaleidoscope.

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

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.

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.

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

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've Always Had A Desire To Write Something And Capture People's Imagination Like Peter Pan Had Captured Mine.

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

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

I Don't Consider Writing A Quiet, Closet Act. I Consider It A Real Physical Act. When I'm Home Writing On The Typewriter, I Go Crazy. I Move Like A Monkey. I've Wet Myself, I've Come In My Pants Writing.

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

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.

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

What Will Happen To Us?" I Asked. "there Will Always Be Us," He Answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Was Raised In Rural South Jersey, And There Was No Culture There. There Was A Small Library, And That Was It. There Was Nothing Else.

I Hadn't Performed Or Been In The Public Eye For About 16 Years. When My Husband Passed Away, I Was Obliged To Go Back To Work To Take Care Of Our Kids. I Also Wanted To Do A Record In Memory Of Him. So We Did Gone Again. During That Process, I Had To Be Photographed And Had To Go Back To Doing Articles And Interviews.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 Really Don't Want Somebody Writing Something Positive About Me If They Don't Believe In It. I'd Rather Somebody Write Something Real Mean. I Like Reading Bad Stuff, It Gets Me Excited. In Fact, The Only Reviews I Keep Are The Bad Ones 'cause I Think They're The Cool Ones.

As An Artist, I Used To Think That My Responsibility Was To Do Good Work. But I Had To Learn From The 70s On That Being A Public Figure Presents Another Aspect Of Responsibility.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In 1974, When I Started Working With The Material That Became Horses, A Lot Of Our Great Voices Had Died. We'd Lost Jimi Hendrix And Jim Morrison And Janis Joplin, And People Like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King And Malcolm X.

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.

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 Don't Feel That Censorship Keeps Me From Doing The Work, Though. I'm My Bigger Censor.

I Didn't Know Kurt Cobain Or Amy Winehouse, But I Was Affected By Both Of Their Deaths Because I Admired Their Work So Much And Mourned Their Youth And Work They Would Never Produce.

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.

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 Think It's Really Great That People Share Their Work [on Myspace] And No One Is Paying For It. I Think That's A Very Healthy Thing And It's Not A Corporate Thing.

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.

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

I Always Wear The Same Thing Onstage.

My Father's Mother Was From Liverpool And She Had This Very Beautiful English China. I Only Wanted To Drink My Cocoa Out Of My Grandmother's Cup And Saucer.

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

Will You Pretend You're My Boyfriend?

I Believe Myself To Be An Artist. That Was My Calling, To Do My Work, And What's Most Important To Me Is To Do The Best Work I Possibly Can. And That Is What Means The Most, That Is What Will Endure.

My Introduction To Photography And A Lot Of How I Developed Aesthetically Was Through '50s And Early-'60s Fashion Magazines Like Harper's Bazaar And Vogue.

The Film [dream Of Life] Is Not Really An Amateur Work, Despite The Fact That None Of Us Have Ever Done Anything Like This Before; Aesthetically, None Of Us Are Amateurs.

One Of My Great Goals When I First Started Taking Photographs Or Showing Them Publicly Is That People Might Want One For Over Their Desk. That's My Goal.

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 Was So Unhealthy As A Child, And At Least Three Or Four Times My Parents Were Told To Get Ready, That I Would Not Make It.

I Had Gone To Paris To Immerse Myself In Painting And I Came Back Wholly Involved In Words And Rhythms.

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

I Always Hope That Young People Will Think For Themselves And Also Most Importantly, Understand That They Should Judge Themselves On Their Own Merit, Their Good Deeds, However Simple, To Not Judge Themselves By What They Have Materially, By What Other People Think Of Them, Through Social Media.

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.

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?

I Love Being Alive. I Like Being A Human Being.

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