Quotes from Patti Smith

I'm pretty moral about what I do. If I didn't think I was worthy of doing something, I wouldn't do it. I ain't gonna waste a bunch of people's time.

Sometimes I get lost in watching a film. The sorrow, or the frustration, is when it doesn't happen for a long time.

Social media could be very strong in terms of bringing people together but it also takes up so much of people's time that I wonder if we've lost the ability to daydream.

Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.

If I'm taking a picture of Brancusi's grave, I know that there's something of him, of his mortal remains, beneath my feet, and there's something beautiful about that.

I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean that we didn't have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor.

I had this idea that the coolest thing that could happen to you was talking with God. My father was always talking about God, and I idolized my father, so I'd spend hours trying to have mental telepathy with God.

I try not to give too much advice, really, because people have to do their things their way. I got lots of advice when I was young, and I ignored most of it - the good and the bad.

Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.

An artist wears his work in place of wounds.

If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer.

I'm a human being, I'm a friend, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm an artist. I do play electric guitar and all of that, but in the end, I'm just a person.

The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.

I know fashion is a material thing, but we live in a material world and I love clothes.

I love my little overgrown yard. And my house is wonderful. It's everything that I need.

The cult of celebrity in the '60s and '70s was really more reserved for movie stars or high socialites. Paparazzi didn't care about Janis Joplin.

My siblings were a bit younger than me, and I was always entertaining them and making up stories.

I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.

We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.

I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.