Quotes from Patti Smith

He flashed a huge smile, one of absolute joy, from a place of no beginning or end.

Kristus var en värdig man att göra uppror mot, för han var själv upproret personifierat.

All doors are open to the believer. It is the lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well.

The child, mystified by the commonplace, moves effortlessly into the strange..

My Morocco. I followed whatever train I wanted. I wrote without writing—of genies and hustlers and mythic travelers, my vagabondia. Then I would walk back home, happily

I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo.

Lisbon is a good city to get lost in. Mornings in cafes scribbling in yet another notebook, each blank page offering escape, the pen serving, fluid and constant. I sleep well, dream little, simply exists within an uninterrupted interlude.

And when we went home he was unnaturally quiet and looked at me as if he wanted to convey all he was feeling without words.

One by one they noted in my reports that I daydreamed far too much, was always somewhere else. Where that somewhere was I cannot say, but it often landed me in the corner sitting on a high stool in full view of all in a conical paper hat.

How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realised I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human angel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the coler of water.

Observing people taking in the work I had watched Robert create was an emotional experience. It had left our private world. It was what I had always wanted for him, but I felt a slight pang of possessiveness sharing it with others. Overriding that feeling was the joy of seeing Robert's face, suffused with confirmation, as he glimpsed the future he had so resolutely sought and had worked so hard to achieve.

When does it cease to be something beautiful, a faithful aspect of the heart, to become off-center, slightly off the axis, and then hurled into an obsessional void?

He tried everything from science to voodoo, everything buy prayer. That, at least, I could give him in abundance. I prayed ceaselessly for him, a desperate human prayer. Not for his life, no one could take that cup from him, but for the strength to endure the unendurable.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

I clawed through a thick web of the culture's consciousness that I hadn't known existed.

There are many truths and there are many worlds, said the sign solemnly. —Yes, I said, feeling quite humbled. And you were right. I did dream, many dreams, and they were much more than dreams, as if originating from the dawn of the mind. Yes, I absolutely dreamed.

The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

So be we king or be we bum the reed still whistles the heart still hums

It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys.

Avevo trovato conforto in Arthur Rimbaud, in cui mi ero imbattuta a sedici anni, su una bancarella di libri di fronte alla stazione degli autobus di Philadelphia; il suo sguardo borioso aveva incrociato il mio dalla copertina di Illuminazioni . Possedeva un'intelligenza insolente capace di infiammarmi, e l'avevo accolto come un compatriota, un parente, un amore segreto perfino. Non avendo i novantanove centesimi per comprare il libro me lo ero messo in tasca.

All doors are open to the believer. It is the lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well. In my sleepy state it occurred to me that if the well was a portal out, there must also be a portal in. There

I had no concept of what life at the Chelsea Hotel would be like when we checked in, but I soon realized it was a tremendous stroke of luck to end up there. We could have had a fair-seized railroad flat in the East Village for what we were paying, but to dwell in this eccentric and damned hotel provided a sense of security as well as a stellar education. The goodwill that surrounded us was proof that the Fates were conspiring to help their enthusiastic children.

Without realizing it, I had said goodbye to traditional employment. I never punched a clock again. I made my own time and my own money.

May the world's small things fill her with delight.