Patti Smith Quotes

My dad got a job in a factory in Philadelphia, so I was raised in Germantown in a sort of a barracks for soldiers. They had housing for temporary housing. And then my parents saved money and bought a little house in South Jersey, built on a swamp.

I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.

You can't change the world you can't fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. You can do small things.

I didn't love Jim Morrison 'cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new.

When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.

What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

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 Dyl

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.

I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll.

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.

My mom loved rock 'n roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around.

My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

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.