Latest Patti Smith Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

  Patti Smith

  Wall, Writing, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The sea is greater than us - it has its rhythm, its art. It comes with our earliest memory, of respiration, breathing in and out.

  Patti Smith

  Art, Memories, Rhythm

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• What is the impulse that drove to direct? To me, it seems so immense. Just having a rock 'n' roll band, or to go from the solitude of writing and to having to collaborate, is almost schizophrenic.

  Patti Smith

  Writing, Solitude, Impulse

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

  Patti Smith

  Frustration, Long, Sorrow

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• John Coltrane, he talks to god. He starts playing his solo, he might play for 14 minutes. For 14 minutes, it seems like he's talking to god, but he always takes a hold of the melody.

  Patti Smith

  Melody, Coltrane

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Talking to god and coming back because that's what we have to do. That's your responsibility as a director, as an artist, as a performer. Your responsibility is back again to your people.

  Patti Smith

  Responsibility, Artist, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• As a child I was such an intense daydreamer; I could be so gone that I had to be smacked to come back. They were really worried that I had some kind of catatonia or something because I would go so far out. Because all I wanted to do was talk to god as a child.

  Patti Smith

  Children, Kind, Intense

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.

  Patti Smith

  Art, Realizing, Creation

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• In any performance, you're on stage for two hours, and there's 40 seconds or maybe a whole five minutes where you feel like the whole universe is in place, and you've gone even beyond the universe that you know.

  Patti Smith

  Hours, Universe

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• We have to believe, as creators - just like a doctor doing heart surgery has to believe that he can save that person's life. You have to believe that your pursuit is not just a noble pursuit, but a necessary and inborn pursuit to uncover something.

  Patti Smith

  Believe, Heart, Surgery

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• That's what artists do, that's what poets do - we all do it. We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything that we've made in order to get to the core place where we started from.

  Patti Smith

  Artist, Sometimes, Poet

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I started going to Bible school really early in life. Being raised a Jehovah's Witness, I had to read the Bible over and over. These stories were so horrifying and really difficult to reconcile. For me, Noah wasn't the story of the graham cracker box with the little animals it was horrifying. I would ask the same questions as a child. "Well, what about the little kids? What about the dogs and cats?"

  Patti Smith

  Dog, Children, School

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• A lullaby should be timeless because it's a timeless concept - the birth of the child.

  Patti Smith

  Children, Birth, Timeless

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• When I was working on the lyrics, I thought of all the lullabies we learn as children: "Away in the Manger," William Blake's lullabies. I realized that the key to lullabies is simplicity.

  Patti Smith

  Children, Simplicity, Lullaby

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I can't bear working with a click track, we're not click track people. But for "Mercy Is ..." we all got in one mind because the song is delicate; it's not a song that showcases a vocal or some virtuoso.

  Patti Smith

  Song, People, Track

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The best thing is to motivate people to do their own work. I'm not opposed to making money. But I started to play rock 'n' roll to motivate others, to shake things up, wake people up and to let other skinny, pimply marginalized weirdos know they're not alone.

  Patti Smith

  Rocks, Play, People

  Source: www.sfgate.com

• I like photographing dresses in windows. I actually wore a lot of dresses in the '70s. I like them on other people now.

  Patti Smith

  People, Dresses, Window

  Source: www.sfgate.com

• We all make choices. Believe me, I would like to write the hit of the world. It's not like I have any desire to be in the shadows. My vision isn't marketing. Some people want to sell 6 million albums. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not what I do. I'd rather look at a piece of work and say it's great rather than it's successful.

  Patti Smith

  Believe, Writing, Successful

  Source: www.sfgate.com

• I always know that everything I do is the best I could do.

  Patti Smith

  Knows

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I don't feel that censorship keeps me from doing the work, though. I'm my bigger censor.

  Patti Smith

  Censorship, Bigger, Feels

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• When you do controversial work, you're going to upset a certain amount of people.

  Patti Smith

  People, Upset, Controversial

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• America is run by corporations, it is run by banks and Wall Street. That's why we can't get guns under control. It's because all these lobbyists don't want gun control, they don't want us to have strong environmental safety guards. Young people can become aware of that and they are the most powerful lobby. With a click of a text, you can have millions of people voting for one person.

  Patti Smith

  Running, Strong, Wall

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• I worked for Hillary [Clinton] when I was young - when she was running for the Senate. I was fundraising and things, I see all of these people as political in a way that isn't humanistic. I'm just watching and hoping that someone is going to distinguish himself or herself as comprehending what we need.

  Patti Smith

  Running, Fundraising, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• Look at Obama - he is now [2015] trying to help us environmentally but he should have done it eight years ago. He's trying to salvage his legacy and trying to do something good but we needed for him to show leadership from day one.

  Patti Smith

  Eight, Should Have, Years

  Source: www.macleans.ca

• In the '50s you had to wear pink ribbons if you were a girl, and you were supposed to become a hairdresser or a secretary. I couldn't stomach it. Later on, when I fell in love with my husband and had children, that's when my mother's earthiness or sense of femaleness kicked in.

  Patti Smith

  Girl, Mother, Children

  Source: www.macleans.ca