Quotes by Patti Smith

“Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.”

“Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.”

“I had one of those headaches. It kept pounding and got into that crazy realm where the guillotine seems like a good idea.”

“We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was i...”

“It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171).”

“It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was.”

“We didnt have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation.”

“...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not s...”

“All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations. All I needed for the heart was to visit a place of greater storms.”

“In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.”

“He wasn't supposed to die,' he cried out, somewhat desperately, petulantly, like a spoiled child. But I could hear other thoughts racing between us.Neither are you.Neither am I.”

“And then I walked out, straight through the twilight, treading the beaten earth. There were no dust clouds, no signs of anyone, but I paid no mind. I was my own lucky hand of solitaire. The desert ...”

“He picks the lock of her dreams with her own hairpin.”

“Everything comes down so pasteurizedeverything comes down 16 degreesthey say your amplifier is too loudturn your amplifier downare we high all alone on our kneesmemory is just hips that swinglike a...”

“We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.”

“I may not know what is in your mind, but I know how your mind works.”

“Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.”

“A writer or any artist cant expect to be embraced by the people. I've done records where it seemed like no one listened to them. You write poetry books that maybe 50 people read. And you just keep ...”

“I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,that Joplin had the last drunken throat,that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.”

“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one”