Top 575 Quotes & Sayings by Patti Smith - Page 8

I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.

We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.

You don't want to OD on improvisation.

Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.

I don't think," he insisted. "I feel.

I always hope that young people will think for themselves and also most importantly, understand that they should judge themselves on their own merit, their good deeds, however simple, to not judge themselves by what they have materially, by what other people think of them, through social media.

I’m not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.

Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.

Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love.

It's Steven's [Sebring] view of what he saw in traveling and working with me. But on another scale, I think the film [Dream of Life] is very humanistic: It touches on motherhood, death, birth, art, laundry, anger against the Bush administration... While I don't think it's the kind of film where one goes to find some of the darker, edgier aspects of life, the film was born of grief.

I gave you a wrist watch, baby, and you wouldn't even give me the time of day.

Will you pretend you're my boyfriend?

Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.

Lets just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.

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.

We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.

Trust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.

I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.

Grief isn't all tears.

Ultimately, I want to make everyone horny.

I hated the makeup. I hated all that pancake makeup. I didn't really like dressing for parts.

I walk alone, assaulted it seems, by tears from heaven.

I remember when you were born, it was dawn and the storm settled near my belly. And I rolled in the grass and spit out the gas, and I lit a match and the void went flash. And the sky split and the planets hit, balls of jade dropped and existence stopped.

We needed time to figure out what all of this meant, how we were going to come to terms and redefine what our love was called. I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.

We never had any children," he said ruefully. "Our work was our children.

What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.

I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life]; it gives the film a certain elegance.

One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.

Hey sister, you're just moving too fast, you're screwing up the quota.

Words are just rules and regulations to me.

Within that moment was trust, compassion, and our mutual sense of irony. He was carrying death within him and I was carrying life. We were both aware of that, I know.

I think the film [Dream of Life] is life-affirming.

I could have a job as a teacher because I like talking in front of people.

I'm not really a nostalgic person.

Pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste.

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.

I use drugs to work. I never use them to escape or for pleasure. When you turn to drugs, all you're doing is turning inside, anyway. I only use drugs for construction. It's like one of my architectural tools.

Much has been said about Robert, and more will be added. Young men will adopt his gait. Young girls will wear white dresses and mourn his curls. He will be condemned and adored. His excesses damned or romanticized. In the end, truth will be found in his work, the corporeal body of the artist. It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to him.

I really feel concerned about young people within our present culture. Our present culture, we have to change. Change is inevitable and I wasn't raised in our present culture but it has great pressure that as a young person I never had. Material pressure, social pressure, visual pressure, how you look, and I just try to appeal to young people to think for themselves, to be their own person, and to ask questions and also be very attentive to our planet and our environment.

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171).

Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.

I believe myself to be an artist. That was my calling, to do my work, and what's most important to me is to do the best work I possibly can. And that is what means the most, that is what will endure.

The truth is, no matter how modest Steven [Sebring] is, he was obsessed with the outcome of the film [Dream of Life]. Every single frame was important to him.

Everybody's got to reclaim these thingspoetry, rock'n'roll, political activismand it's got to be done over and over again. It's like eating: you can't say,'Oh, I ate yesterday'.You have to eat again.

When I stopped performing for 16 years and lived in Michigan and was married and raising my children, I wrote about four or five books. I haven't published them.

I just like living in certain atmospheres. Or I just like people as they are.

The hand above turns those leaves of loves, all in all a timeless view. Each dream of life flung from paradise everlasting, ever new.

I liked being on stage, I just didn't like the theatrical aspect of being in front of people.

Steven's [Sebring] presence was not threatening; he told me that if I never wanted the footage to be seen by anyone, he would give it to me. So I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and what I gained was his supportive energy and the supportive energy of his wife, who was sometimes the one schlepping the equipment or doing the sound.

I always know that everything I do is the best I could do.

I actually had another motivation for letting Steven [Sebring] film us. After I'd been out of the public eye for 16 years, lost my friends and lost my husband, some of my confidence had been undermined. Steven made the process of filming fun; I could pretend that we were in something like Don't Look Back.

We believe we will raise the sky, we got to fly over the land, over the sea. Fate unwinds and if we die, souls arise. God, do not seize me please.

If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, "Don't film me anymore," [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them; he just respected their wishes.

I think its very important to not be afraid to experience joy in the middle of sorrow.

I know from an early age that I'm very comfortable in front of people. When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.

The whole process of working with Steven [Sebring] and being filmed by him helped me psychologically to get my feet back on the ground.

[Steven Sebring] presence was also nice for my children, who, having just lost their father, quite naturally craved warm male attention. They gravitated to him right away.

I don't feel that censorship keeps me from doing the work, though. I'm my bigger censor.

I was at one of the lowest points of my life when we started this film [Dream of Life], except, of course, that I had two great children. But the film is not documenting a decline; it's documenting a rise up - first baby steps and then big steps up. The worst that could have ever happened to me had already happened. And so the film is on the ascent. And I think that gives it a nice spirit.

I like photographing dresses in windows. I actually wore a lot of dresses in the '70s. I like them on other people now.