Patti Smith
I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination - my imagination is always fertile. I'm either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do.Collection: Imagination
My mom loved rock n' roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around. He liked classical music and Duke Ellington.Collection: Mom
My mom loved rock 'n roll. My father hated it. We couldn't play it when he was around.Collection: Mom
For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your horoscope and provide a little blank slot for each day.Collection: Christmas
I didn't love Jim Morrison 'cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new.Collection: Poetry
I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.Collection: Poetry
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.Collection: Poetry
What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.Collection: Poetry
I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Medical
In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.Collection: Art
Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.Collection: Knowledge
The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.Collection: Good
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.Collection: Positive
People wouldn't know this about me, but I adore ball gowns. I love their cut, their architecture and the thought of the hands of so many seamstresses working on them.Collection: Architecture
It's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.Collection: Cool
We tried not to age, but time had its rage.Collection: Age
The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.Collection: Communication
I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean that we didn't have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor.Collection: Humor
Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.Collection: Nature
Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.Collection: Experience
I'm a human being, I'm a friend, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm an artist. I do play electric guitar and all of that, but in the end, I'm just a person.Collection: Mom
You can't change the world; you can't fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. You can do small things.Collection: Change
Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man. The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.Collection: Hope
Good news doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man.Collection: Positive
To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.Collection: Freedom
My dad got a job in a factory in Philadelphia, so I was raised in Germantown in a sort of a barracks for soldiers. They had housing for temporary housing. And then my parents saved money and bought a little house in South Jersey, built on a swamp.Collection: Dad
I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.Collection: Family
The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.Collection: Cool
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.Collection: Poetry
The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.Collection: Poetry
I was raised Jehovah's Witness. I was in Bible school at five or six years old, but I wouldn't say that we were a religious family.Collection: Family
I work to Glenn Gould in the morning and go to sleep listening to Parsifal.Collection: Morning
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'
Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.
My sunglasses are like my guitar.
As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.
If I've learned one thing in life, it's not to be so judgmental of other people.
Some of us are born rebellious. Like Jean Genet or Arthur Rimbaud, I roam these mean streets like a villain, a vagabond, an outcast, scavenging for the scraps that may perchance plummet off humanity's dirty plates, though often sometimes taking a cab to a restaurant is more convenient.
I come from a working-class family, and I've been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all.
Sometimes you're doing really well, then, after three or four years, everything inexplicably crashes like a house of cards and you have to rebuild it. It's not like you get to a point where you're all right for the rest of your life.
I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.
My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations. She's an environmentalist, she plays piano, she's raising money for the earthquake victims in Nepal. Every day she surprises me and teaches me something.
All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
If I'm taking a picture of Brancusi's grave, I know that there's something of him, of his mortal remains, beneath my feet, and there's something beautiful about that.
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
There is hardly a place in New York that you can't walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I've been all over the world. There's no place like that but New York City.