Quotes from Patti Smith

How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they're gone? (P.92)

Eu não conseguia me identificar com movimentos políticos. Quando tentava participar de algum, sentia-me tomada por outra forma de burocracia. Perguntava-me se alguma coisa que fazia tinha importância.

At least they'll never get it," he said. "Who are they?" I asked. "Anyone who isn't us." he replied.

A disconcerting image of the cameraman thrown in a shallow grave passed through my sights; he sat up in the dark and noticed the blanket of his bed was made of sod.

I believed he would once again embrace the knowledge that there is no pure evil, nor pure good, only purity.

We never saw beyond New York save in books and never sat in an airplane holding each other's hand to ascend into a new sky and descend onto a new Earth. Yet Robert and I had explored the frontier of our work and created space for each other.

We lost contact with Ed but a decade later he was with me in an unexpected way. As I approached the microphone with my electric guitar to sing the opening line "So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star," I remembered his words. Small prophecies.

All writers are bums...

Gregory [Corso] made lists of books for me to read, told me the best dictionary to own, encouraged and challenged me. Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, my new university.

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

Nobody sees as we do, Patti

We are guided by roses, the scent of a page.

Taxin kommer för snabbt och jag inser att jag inte har valt ut några böcker. Tanken på att stiga ombord på ett flygplan utan bok ger mig panik. Rätt bok kan vara ett slags guide, något som sätter tonen för resan eller till och med får den att byta riktning.

Varför skriver vi? En kör av röster väller fram. För att vi inte bara kan leva.

Varför måste man skriva? För att ställa sig vid sidan om, som i en kokong, försjunken i ensamhet, på trots mot andras behov. Virginia Woolf hade sitt rum. Proust sina stängda fönsterluckor. Marguerite Duras sitt tysta hus. Dylan Thomas sin enkla bod. Alla var de ute efter en tomhet att fylla med ord. Orden som ska tränga in i orörda marker, uppdaga oinmutade associationer, ge uttryck åt oändligheten.

One cannot approximate truth, add nor take away, for there is no one on earth like the true shepherd and there is nothing in heaven like the suffering of real life.

Everything pours forth. Photographs their history. Books their words. Walls their sounds. The spirits rose like an ether that spun an arabesque and touched down as gently as a benevolent mask.

Nothing seemed more romantic to my young mind. 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.

Hey, sister. What's your situation?" "On earth or in the universe?" He laughed and said, "All right!

They had no communal mythology; no tales of treason, treasure, and snow forts. It was a safe existence but not a fairy-tale one.

Christ died for somebody's sins / But not mine,

I thought of Thomas Paine's words: these are the times that try men's souls. Outside, the rain ceased but high winds remained. And what was truth remained the truth. It was the last day of the year of the monkey and the golden cockerel was crowing, for the insufferable yellow-haired confidence man had been sworn in, with a Bible no less, and Moses and Jesus and Buddha and Mohamed seemed somewhere else entirely.

The knowledge of him added swagger to my step and this could not be stripped away.

I can examine how, but not why, I wrote what I did, or why I had so perversely deviated from my original path. Can one, tracking and successfully collaring a criminal, truly comprehend the criminal mind? Can we truly separate the how and the why?