Quote

I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.

Patti Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Patti Smith
Age: 77
Born: 1946
Born: December 30
Composer
Drawer
Guitarist
Human Rights Activist
Musician
Photographer
Poet
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Visual Artist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Patricia Lee Smith
Performer
Evolved
Performers
Musician
Strong

More quotes by Patti Smith

Image
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
Image
I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life] it gives the film a certain elegance.
Patti Smith
Image
Spare the child and spoil the rod, I am not sellin' myself to god.
Patti Smith
Image
Paths that cross will cross again
Patti Smith
Image
For me, personally, I think drugs are sacred and should be used for work. That's what I believe in. Drugs have a real shamanistic value. I can handle drugs. I've never had a problem.
Patti Smith
Image
I'm not really a nostalgic person.
Patti Smith
Image
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
Image
The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.
Patti Smith
Image
I wanted to remember the original energy strip away all the glamour and limousines and tons of drugs. I wanted to get back to the revolutionary ideas, merging poetry and rhythm and rock and roll.
Patti Smith
Image
A good artist's always got his hand in his zipper.
Patti Smith
Image
I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.
Patti Smith
Image
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.
Patti Smith
Image
I'm certain, as we filled down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve years-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.
Patti Smith
Image
I'm not a critic. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a philosopher. Arguing that punk has run its course is like saying painting ran its course after the Renaissance. Punk is an idea. It's freedom. And it'll be around 200 years from now for the people who want it.
Patti Smith
Image
I think its very important that we enjoy our life, that we get everything we can out of it.
Patti Smith
Image
I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.
Patti Smith
Image
I think the film [Dream of Life] is life-affirming.
Patti Smith
Image
When I perform, I always opt for communication with God, and in pursuit of communicating with God, you can enter some very dangerous territory. I also have come to realize that total communication with God is physical death.
Patti Smith
Image
It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)
Patti Smith
Image
My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.
Patti Smith