Quote

When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.

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
Never
Secret
Burroughs
Desire
Detective
Write
Detectives
Young
William
Wells
Straightforward
Well
Novel
Writing
Knew
Really
Quite

More quotes by Patti Smith

Image
I was so horny in school it felt like my body was filled with electricity. I felt like I had neon bones or something.
Patti Smith
Image
It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.
Patti Smith
Image
I was so involved in my boy-rhythms that I never came to grips with the fact that I was a girl. I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, You can't be outside wrestling without a T-shirt on. It was a trauma.
Patti Smith
Image
Look at Obama - he is now [2015] trying to help us environmentally but he should have done it eight years ago. He's trying to salvage his legacy and trying to do something good but we needed for him to show leadership from day one.
Patti Smith
Image
I know from an early age that I'm very comfortable in front of people. When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.
Patti Smith
Image
I remember when you were born, it was dawn and the storm settled near my belly. And I rolled in the grass and spit out the gas, and I lit a match and the void went flash. And the sky split and the planets hit, balls of jade dropped and existence stopped.
Patti Smith
Image
Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.
Patti Smith
Image
We're a culture more than ever that wants proof of everything, we want things fast, and someone sends you an email, you want to answer in five minutes. We have to allow ourselves nothingness, in our relationships too.
Patti Smith
Image
I don't think the average American understands what patriotism truthfully is. That's why when I attack our country or attack the government, it's sometimes looked at as unpatriotic. It's not.
Patti Smith
Image
In any performance, you're on stage for two hours, and there's 40 seconds or maybe a whole five minutes where you feel like the whole universe is in place, and you've gone even beyond the universe that you know.
Patti Smith
Image
Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?
Patti Smith
Image
Good news doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man.
Patti Smith
Image
Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.
Patti Smith
Image
My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills... So my parents always struggled.
Patti Smith
Image
All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
Patti Smith
Image
What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.
Patti Smith
Image
My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.
Patti Smith
Image
Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.
Patti Smith
Image
Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.
Patti Smith
Image
I'm very comfortable with being a female now but when I was a little kid I only wanted to be a boy. I didn't want to be a girl. I didn't feel like a man inside... being a boy was just cooler.
Patti Smith