870 Quotes by Patti Smith

People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone’s vision, because in the end, that’s what you got: your clay in someone else’s hands.

All doors are open to the believer. It is the lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well. In my sleepy state it occurred to me that if the well was a portal out, there must also be a portal in. There.

Words tumble in helpless disorder. The dead speak. We have forgotten how to listen.

Friendship makes thieves of us all.

I’ve never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they’re not going to be great writers.

Nothing is a hobby – each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has ‘minor works’ that they do, but I don’t think I have any ‘minor disciplines.’

Sometimes you’re doing really well, then, after three or four years, everything inexplicably crashes like a house of cards and you have to rebuild it. It’s not like you get to a point where you’re all right for the rest of your life.

A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.

I could feel the gravitational pull of home, which when I’m home too long becomes the gravitational pull of somewhere else.