Quotes from Patti Smith

Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)

We would all like to believe that we came from nowhere but ourselves, every gesture is our own. But then we find we belong to the history and fate of a long line of beings that also may have wished to be free.

I could feel the gravitational pull of home, which when I'm home too long becomes the gravitational pull of somewhere else.

This is what I know - Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. My dog, who was dead in 1957, is still dead. Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen. Maybe tomorrow.

the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.

We sometimes eclipse our own dreams with reality.

He wasn't certain whether he was a good or bad person. Whether he was altruistic. Whether he was demonic. But he was certain of one thing. He was an artist. And for that he would never apologize.

Nothing bothered me, not even the things that bothered me.

I was never going to become anything but myself, that i was of the clan of Peter Pan and we did not grow up

People have the power to redeem the work of fools.

Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue.

We seek to stay present, even as the ghosts attempt to draw us away.

It's not so easy writing about nothing.

Lost things. They claw through the membranes, attempting to summon our attention through an indecipherable mayday. Words tumble in helpless disorder. The dead speak. We have forgotten how to listen.

Please, no matter how we advance in technology please don't abandon the book-there is nothing in our material world more beautiful than a book.

For a time Robert protected me, then was dependent on me, and then possessive of me. His transformation was the rose of Genet, and he was pierced deeply by his blooming.

I was attracted to Robert's work because his visual vocabulary was akin to my poetic one, even if we seemed to be moving toward different destinations. Robert always would tell me, "Nothing is finished until you see it.

I was superstitious. Today was a Monday. I was born on Monday. It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me.

Our quiet rage gives us wings, the possibility to negotiate the gears winding backwards uniting all time.

Tearing things apart (is) a powerful aspect of human nature.

Smile for me, Patti, as I am smiling for you.

As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.

He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the rest of the world.

My great quandary was what coat to wear and which books to bring.