Quotes from Patti Smith

I haven't had the most thrilling lifestyle. I was a pretty good dresser, but I would have a pretty boring 'Behind the Music.'

Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.

I like my time on earth. And no matter what kind of cards I've been dealt, I'm happy to be there.

I think it's important for people to realize that we were all young, all naive, and also we had lived in a time that had magic.

I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.

The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all these things keeps your mind elastic.

I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.

Throughout my life, I happily deferred to family, companions, children.

My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.

I come from a working-class family, and I've been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all.

Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man. The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.

The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.

I was actually born in Chicago, and then when I was a toddler, my parents moved to Philadelphia.

I gave you a wrist watch, baby, and you wouldn't even give me the time of day.

I didn't waste my time on things I didn't love.

Love is an angel disguised as lust.

Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.

When I did 'Horses,' I never expected to make another album.

As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.

In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.

I think we have a creative impulse where suffering can magnify our work, but so can joy. You can be in love and write the greatest love song ever. Sometimes I think too much suffering makes it difficult to do one's work.

The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist.