Quotes from Patti Smith

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark.

Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. - Gloria

When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.

For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.

I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation ...

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.

Paths that cross will cross again.

Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.

I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.

Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line.

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.

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.

How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they're gone?

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

Later he would say that the Church led him to God, and LSD led him to universe. He also said that art led him to the devil, and sex kept him with the devil.

In time we often become one with those we once failed to understand.

Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.

Everything comes down so pasteurized everything comes down 16 degrees they say your amplifier is too loud turn your amplifier down are we high all alone on our knees memory is just hips that swing like a clock the past projects fantastic scenes tic/toc tic/toc tic/toc fuck the clock!

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond.

But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revalation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.