Patricia Lee Smith, better known as Patti Smith, is a renowned singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist.Patti Smith is best known for her celebrated song ‘Because The Night’. In addition, she also entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021.Patti Smith’s brilliant work in the field of music has earned her the title of Punk Poet Laureate. Over the years, she has inspired many people with her words (both in books and songs). Here is a collection of her best quotes that every Patti Smith fan will enjoy.Patti Smith Quotes On SuccessPatti Smith has led an incredibly successful career. Listed below are some of her best quotes related to success.“[W]ithout a doubt we sometimes eclipse our own dreams with reality.” - ‘M Train’.“I didn’t waste my time on things I didn’t love.““Anxious for some permanency, I guess I needed to be reminded how temporal permanency is.““Swift is the arrow, dark is the thorn, the slate is clean, the future awaits, awake.““Nothing is a hobby - each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has ‘minor works’ that they do, but I don’t think I have any ‘minor disciplines.’““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."“The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It’s the artist’s responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.” - ‘Just Kids’.“Got to lose control before you take control.”“An artist wears his work in place of wounds.““The Lord gives us wings He gives us a stomach we can fly or vomit."“But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.” - ‘Just Kids’.“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.““When you hit a wall, just kick it in.““We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.““Acknowledge all man as fellow creation, but don’t follow him."“I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-changed.” - ‘Just Kids’.“If you over-plan, you close the door on possibilities."“The trouble with dreaming is that we eventually wake up.” - ‘Year Of The Monkey’.“Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.““Writing is not some quiet, closet act.““Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional."“Not all dreams need to be realized.” - ‘M Train’.“I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.“Inspirational Patti Smith Quotes(Read the most famous quotes from the renowned American artist Patti Smith.)Patti Smith’s quotes have always been very inspirational, mainly to budding artists. The best ones are given below.“If you don’t have what you need, just rock with what you’ve got!”“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.““I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.““Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents."“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.” - ‘Just Kids’.“The only thing you can count on is change.““Laughter. An essential ingredient for survival. And we laughed a lot."“I’m off balance, not sure what’s wrong. —You have misplaced joy, he said without hesitation. Without joy, we are as dead. — How do I find it again? —Find those who have it and bathe in their perfection.” - ‘M Train’.“We need a new cosmology. New gods. New sacraments. Another drink.““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."“In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all.” - ‘M Train’.“I’m an artist. I’m interested in how art gets made.““Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?"“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.” - November 17, 2010, National Book Award 2010.“People say beware, but I don’t care. Their words are just rules and regulations to me.”“I immersed myself in books and rock ‘n’ roll, the adolescent salvation…““Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.” - ‘Patti Smith Collected Lyrics’.“Nothing is ever solved, Solving is an illusion. There are moments of spontaneous brightness, when the mind appears emancipated, but this is more epiphany.” - ‘Year Of The Monkey’.“Rock n’ roll is dream soup, what’s your brand?““We tried not to age, but time had its rage.““Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free."“I’m sure I could write endlessly about nothing. If only I had nothing to say.” - ‘M Train’.“Freedom is…the right to write the wrong words.”“I believe that we, that this planet, hasn’t seen its Golden Age. Everybody says its finished … art’s finished, rock and roll is dead, God is dead.““I reflected on the fact that no matter how good I aspired to be, I was never going to achieve perfection.““I’m right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age …if only each generation would realize that the time for greatness is right now when they’re alive … the time to flower is now."“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.”“Life is like a roller coaster ride, it is never going to be perfect. It is going to have perfect moments and rough spots, but it’s all worth it.““You can’t make a mistake when you improvise.““I’m not afraid of terrorism at all. I’m afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship."“Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech” - Penthouse Interview, 1976.“Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line.” -‘M Train’.“I think I’m constantly in a state of adjustment.”“I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it.” - reference to Andy Warhol - ‘Just Kids’.“Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.““Outside of society, if you’re looking that’s where you’ll find me.““I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates …““I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust."“Why can’t I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.” - ‘Just Kids’.“To be an artist is to enter into competition with god.”“Lost things. They claw through the membranes, attempting to summon our attention through an indecipherable mayday. Words tumble in helpless disorder. The dead speak. We have forgotten how to listen.” - ‘M Train’.“Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.”“Our quiet rage gives us wings, the possibility to negotiate the gears winding backwards uniting all time.” - ‘Year Of The Monkey’.“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."“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.” - ‘Early Work, 1970-1979’.“I wish I could just project everything on the paper.““Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat."“Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.”“I was too curious about the future to look back.” - ‘Just Kids’.“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.”“Maybe we can’t draw flesh from reverie nor retrieve a dusty spur, but we can gather the dream itself and bring it back uniquely whole.““People have the power to redeem the work of fools.““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’m an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.“Patti Smith Quotes On LoveLove has played a great role in Patti Smith’s life and career. Here is what the famous musician has to say on this topic.“In time we often become one with those we once failed to understand.““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."“We never had any children,” he said ruefully. “Our work was our children.” - ‘Just Kids’.“I had gone to Paris to immerse myself in painting and I came back wholly involved in words and rhythms."“How is it that we never completely comprehend our love for someone until they’re gone?” - ‘M Train’.“Deep in my heart how the presence of you shines, in a light to last a whole life through.““We would work side by side for hours, in a state of mutual concentration."“I knew he didn’t love me, but I adored him anyway.” - ‘Just Kids’.“Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph."“We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.” - ‘Just Kids’.“I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart.” - ‘Just Kids’.“Love is an angel disguised as lust."“Just come back, I was thinking. You’ve been gone long enough. Just come back. I will stop traveling; I will wash your clothes.” - ‘M Train’.“He wrote me a note to say we would create art together and we would make it, with or without the rest of the world.” - ‘Just Kids’.“We promised that we’d never leave one another again until we both knew we were ready to stand on our own. And this vow, through everything we were yet to go through, we kept."“For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions, and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.”“We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.” - ‘Just Kids’.“Since childhood, it was my dream to go where all the poets and artists had been. Rimbaud, Artaud, Brancusi, Camus, Picasso, Bresson, Goddard, Jeanne Moreau, Juliette Greco, everybody – Paris for me was a Mecca.““Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed."“I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.” - ‘Just Kids’.“I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.““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.““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."“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.” - ‘Just Kids’.“What will happen to us?” I asked. “There will always be us,” he answered.““I know fashion is a material thing, but we live in a material world and I love clothes.“Patti Smith Quotes On FeminismRead some of Patti Smith’s most famous quotes on feminism in this section.“I’ve never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they’re not going to be great writers"“I felt alien my whole life but I didn’t feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender."“Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.”“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.”“As a citizen, hopefully, I’m humanist. As an artist, I’m free."“As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.”“She is a soldier. She will not be defeated.”
Patricia Lee Smith, better known as Patti Smith, is a renowned singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist.
