Patti Smith
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.
People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.
No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.
It was no hardship to me to spend long hours reading and writing.
Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it.
I didn't know Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, but I was affected by both of their deaths because I admired their work so much and mourned their youth and work they would never produce.
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.
People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.
As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
We didn't have the phrase 'style icon' when I was young, but I have to say, I really copied Bob Dylan when I was younger: a little bit of Bob Dylan or a lot of Bob Dylan and the French symbolist poets - I liked how they dressed - and Catholic school boys.
I voted for Obama. I was very happy when he won. But Obama hasn't really been able to effectively do anything that has made me... He hasn't helped the environment. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay. He went deeper into Afghanistan.
You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.
I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.
Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.
I always wrote. I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the '80s developing my craft as a writer.
I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.
If you feel good about who you are inside, it will radiate.
Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.
New York is a great city. There is no question of that. It's such a diverse city. I've walked down the city and heard four or five different languages simultaneously. I think that's beautiful.
Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune.
I remember when the Bic pen was controversial. They came from France. They were cheap, and when one was out of ink, you threw it away; you didn't dip it into more ink.
When I was a child, I was certain that I could remember what it was like to live on Venus; I could remember what it was like to live in the American Plains. I could remember. And it's ancient memory. We all have it. It's just that some of us access it more than others.
Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.
I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
C'mon, I mean who didn't listen to 'The Who' in the 60s?
As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
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.
I like really hot coffee, not too strong.
I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library, and that was it. There was nothing else.
I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.
An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf.
Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all. I like 'Detective Frost.'
As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.
My mother answers all my fan mail.
The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all these things keeps your mind elastic.
I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
I have a lot of energy, and I like to work.
Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?
I try not to give too much advice, really, because people have to do their things their way. I got lots of advice when I was young, and I ignored most of it - the good and the bad.
Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.