Quotes from Patti Smith

The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.

Christmas was coming and there was a pervasive melancholy, as if everyone simultaneously remembered they had nowhere to go. Even

My penance for barely being present in the world, not the world between the pages of books, or the layered atmosphere of my own mind, but the world that is real to others

The process of boarding a plane without a book produces a wave of panic. The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.

I seldom visit people's homes, for despite the hospitality offered I often suffer a feeling of confinement or imagined pressure.

You know, the dreams you had for me weren't my dreams," he said. "Maybe those dreamsare meant for you.

The transformation of a heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.

I don't think public life in and of itself can destroy you. I think it's the way people react to it, and some people are more sturdy than others... I don't think any one faction can be blamed for a person's self destruction - a certain amount of that has to be innate.

He is overcome with the disease of love, the drunkenness of generations past. When are we ourselves, he wonders, trudging through the snow-covered banks, his coat illuminated by moon-light.

Toys to deftly pluck up like animal crackers and deposit safely into a crate decorated with friezes of bright circus trains carrying aardvarks, dodos, swift dromedaries, baby elephants, and plastic dinosaurs. A box of mixed metaphors.

Here is joy and neglect. A little mescal. A little jacking off, but mostly just work. —This is how I live, I am thinking.

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.

Behind her smile I could see o many other things, a catastrophic sadness. I had assisted to the selfless guardians of the unfortunate children who suffered infinite loss, their family, their homes, and nature as they had known and trusted.

He had ignored nature and now turned to her for his salvation, and set about to make peace with her, bowing to her mysteries.

In his heartlessness he had ignored nature, and how heartless nature was in return.

Mommy, I said aloud, and I thought of her suddenly stopping what she was doing, often in the center of the kitchen, and invoking her own mother whom she lost when she was eleven years old. How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they're gone?

Thank you, I said. I have lived in my own book. One I never planned to write, recording time backwards and forwards.

I have smoothed the hem of the robe of Parsifal. Watched Giotto's sheep wander from a fresco. Prayed before holy icons unveiled, surviving time. Held shavings swept from the hut of Geppetto. Unzipped a body bag and beheld the face of my brother. Witnessed the acolyte scatter petals over a dying poet. I saw the smoke of incense form the shape of my days. I saw my love return to God. I saw things as they are.

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.

All doors are open to the believer.

There is only one directive: that the lost are found; that the thick leaves encasing the dead are parted and they are lifted into the arms of light.

Estaba comenzando a notar otra sensación para la que no tenía nombre. Se sentía dueño de su vida. Ya no volvería a ser un esclavo.

I know that you are concerned about the fate of the driver, he said, but it's out of our hands. He placed us in real jeopardy and in the end my concern was for you. —Oh, I wasn't afraid. —Yes, he said, that's why I was concerned.

Despite all efforts, February just slips away, though being a leap year there is one extra day to observe.