Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPunk Singer
Date of Birth30 December 1946
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
rocks enough chords
I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.
artist giving creative
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.
writing pursuit awake
Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.
flames feelings alive
If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.
children red-lipstick want
Even as a child, I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to wear red lipstick.
artist wounds
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
new-york taken struggle
New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.
people want embrace
I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.
christian thinking years
I think really that's just the basic Christian lesson that sometimes takes us years and years to understand - have equal concern for another human being as you have for yourself or perhaps even more concern for another human being than you have for yourself.
prayer war humility
In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.
encouragement
I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
love angel lust
Love is an angel disguised as lust.
loss mobility terrorism
I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.
loneliness space understood
I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.