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
time doe answers
Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.
mother responsibility exercise
My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, to give them my energy and accept theirs. We're all in it together, and I respond emotionally as a worker, a mother, an artist, and a human being with a voice. We all have a voice. We have the responsibility to exercise it, to use it.
world lines neat
Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line -- you have your own interior world, and it's not neat.
mother father two
I always thought my father [influenced me most] because he was so well read, I tried to model myself on him, but really as I go through life I realise it was my mother who gave me the most valuable instructions. I didn't understand or accept it at the time. She taught me to read and to pray - two things that have really stayed with me.
people interaction
Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.
people fool
People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
artist what-matters want
To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.
inspirational life art
Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.
activism embraced found interested love poetry political rock roll
I'm not really a musician. I'm a performer, and I love rock n' roll. I've embraced rock n' roll because it encompasses all the things I'm interested in: poetry, revolution, sexuality, political activism - all of these things can be found in rock n' roll.
I never thought I was gonna live to 30.
certainly concept cut except girls piece screaming star tastes trying
I know what that tastes like, to be a rock-and-roll star - to have a limousine, to have girls screaming when they see you, girls trying to cut my hair, get a piece of me. But I don't walk around with a concept of myself as a rock-and-roll star, and certainly not as a musician, because I really can't play anything, except primitively.
good people
I know that some people have different personas for the different things they do, and I'm not criticizing that - maybe it's a good thing - but I'm the same old person, so I take everything in stride.
struck william
I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him.
drew early hear people songs suffer work
I like revisiting my early work, and people like to hear it. I don't make people suffer through any experimentation or new material. When I go see an artist, I want to hear the songs that drew me to them, so I do the same.