A Quote by Patti Smith

I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

Patti Smith

Quote Topics

Anything Fields Find Go Hit Important Important Thing Me Most Most Important Thing Multiple Myself Painful Perform Photographs Road Taking The Most Important Thing Those Walls Without Work Write Writing

Quote Author

Patti Smith
American - Musician
Born: December 30, 1946

I think the things that are more painful to me are not the intrusion of paparazzi, it's the lack of civility that I find more intimidating and far more painful an experience. It's the lack of critical thinking. It's the endless snarky, mean way we talk about each other, we approach each other. The anonymity of being cruel, the delight in tearing people down. The tabloid era that we find ourselves in is a cultural boneyard, and that is painful to me.

Sarah Jessica Parker

When I realised that I had feelings for men as well as women, at first I was worried and frightened, and there was a certain amount of 'Who am I? Am I a criminal?' and so on. It took me a long time to come to terms with myself. Those were painful years - painful then and painful to look back on.

Vikram Seth

At that time, I had recently finished a book called Amazing Grace, which many people tell me is a very painful book to read. Well, if it was painful to read, it was also painful to write. I had pains in my chest for two years while I was writing that book.

Jonathan Kozol

I find myself speaking through the other characters, putting ideas in their voices and heads. Writing almost becomes a splitting of myself into multiple personalities. But I don't write to make an argument on behalf of any of the characters, or to prove anything about a character. I think that's important that I be serving the story first and not my own point of view.

Danzy Senna

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing; it really is.

Cary Fukunaga

Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.

Patrick Modiano

If the motive of writing is for some people a kind of exercise in dirty laundry, that's one thing. I've always thought of my poems as meant to be overheard, as I think all of these poems are. It seems to me if you get experience right, even your most painful or humiliating experiences - if you get those experiences right for yourself and make discoveries as you go along and find for them some formal glue - they will be poems for others.

Stephen Dunn

For me writing is a long, hard, painful process, but it is addictive, a pleasure that I seek out actively. My advice to young writers is this: Read a lot. Read to find out what past writers have done. Then write about what you know. Write about your school, your class, about your teachers, your family. That's what I did. Each writer must find his or her own kind of voice. Finally, you have to keep on writing.

Laurence Yep

To walk behind others on a road you are traveling together, to give precedence to others without envy - this is painful for an individual and painful for a nation.

Gustav Stresemann

The most painful thing in life is to wake up from a dream and find no way out. Dreamers are fortunate people. If no way out can be seen, the important thing is not to awaken the sleepers.

Lu Xun

If you go to YouTube and look up 'grief' you can find them and it's just an unbelievable tool for an actor to be able to access, without being unethical. It's like accessing the deepest, most painful parts of a person.

Aaron Eckhart

You know when people smile too much? It's painful. I find it really painful. Happy is not very reliable. I'm trying to live like, um, with a fierce calm.

Tori Amos

A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they're not going to be able to find.

Edward Hirsch

I often find myself worrying about celebrities. It's an entirely caring thing; it's not like the people who commission those photographs with cruel arrows to go on the covers of the celebrity magazines. The photographs show botched plastic surgery, raging eczema, weight gain and horrible clothes for maximum schadenfreude.

Peter York

The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.