Explore Quotes by Patti Smith

Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line -- you have your own interior world, and it's not neat.

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

A writer, or any artist, can’t expect to be embraced by the people [but] you just keep doing your work - because you have to, because it’s your calling.

Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.

If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.

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.

It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.

I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realize that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.

Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.

I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act._x000D_ I consider it a real physical act._x000D_ When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy._x000D_ I move like a monkey._x000D_ I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing.

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

I’m not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.

Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.

I longed to read everything I possibly could, and the things I read in turn produced new yearnings.

Lets just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.

We needed time to figure out what all of this meant, how we were going to come to terms and redefine what our love was called. I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.

New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.

Christianity made us think there's one heaven.

Toyland, toyland . . . once you pass its portals you may never return again.