870 Quotes by Patti Smith

The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe.

This is what I know – Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. My cat is dead. My dog, who was dead in 1957, is still dead. Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen. Maybe tomorrow.

I started thinking what could happen with my art and I realized that the biggest thing that could is that it winds up in a museum. It’s like finding a rare animal and putting it in the zoo.

When I’m on my own with my camera, taking these pictures, it feels as if I am in a room of my own, a self-contained world.

More than anything, that’s been the thread through my life – the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it’s taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.

I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in. Todd.

There is only one directive: that the lost are found; that the thick leaves encasing the dead are parted and they are lifted into the arms of light.

Half-empty paper coffee cups. Half-eaten deli sandwiches. An encrusted soup bowl. Here is joy and neglect. A little mescal. A little jacking off, but mostly just work. – This is how I live, I am thinking.

I’m more concerned with the work people do than their gender. When I was younger, I was pretty judgmental. Things had to be a certain way. Now I just want to see the work. It doesn’t matter who does it.