Quote

Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.

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
Doe
Mass
Self
Songs
Lofty
Giving
Poetry
Masses
Different
Involved
Solitary
Writing
Imagine
Performing
People
Process
Pursuit
Song
Communication
Write
Aspect

More quotes by Patti Smith

Image
An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
Patti Smith
Image
I think guys are more emotional. Men are supposed to be the strong ones, they have pressure on them to be strong, but when it comes to sex men are much more emotional than women.
Patti Smith
Image
Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
Patti Smith
Image
Hopefully if you create something fine, people will relate to it, so you're communicating with people, and you're not in a void. On the other hand, because you're always creating and transforming, art always separates you - always.
Patti Smith
Image
I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.
Patti Smith
Image
I was always a tomboy as a kid. I always had boyfriends. I was just a regular girl growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, but I was never really attracted to what the girls were attracted to: makeup, my appearance, homemaking.
Patti Smith
Image
We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.
Patti Smith
Image
I wasn't thinking so much of music. I wasnt thinking so much of perfection or stardom or any of that stuff.
Patti Smith
Image
Paths that cross will cross again
Patti Smith
Image
My father was always talking about God, and I idolized my father, so I'd spend hours trying to have mental telepathy with God.
Patti Smith
Image
My public life was so demanding that I wasn't doing the things that I deemed the most important.
Patti Smith
Image
I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.
Patti Smith
Image
I really don't want somebody writing something positive about me if they don't believe in it. I'd rather somebody write something real mean. I like reading bad stuff, it gets me excited. In fact, the only reviews I keep are the bad ones 'cause I think they're the cool ones.
Patti Smith
Image
I've lost many, many friends through natural causes, through alcohol, through drugs, through AIDS. And every time I lose a friend or a loved one, it reminds me how great life is.
Patti Smith
Image
My father's mother was from Liverpool and she had this very beautiful English china. I only wanted to drink my cocoa out of my grandmother's cup and saucer.
Patti Smith
Image
When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.
Patti Smith
Image
I got my style from a lot of different people, even my style of reading, even Johnny Carson inspired me.
Patti Smith
Image
Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
Patti Smith
Image
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.
Patti Smith
Image
Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free.
Patti Smith