Patti Smith Quotes - Page 10

My father came a couple of times, but he always blamed his hearing loss on my loud amplifiers. So he didn't come anymore, but I had his support.

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

The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.

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

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.

My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.

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.

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.

It was no hardship to me to spend long hours reading and writing.

In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.

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

My public life was so demanding that I wasn't doing the things that I deemed the most important.

When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.

If I'm really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don't even think about brushing my hair.

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.

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. Of course there are stories that are still relevant and inspiring; lessons that need to be taught over and over again. And they give people hope.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.

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

Words are just rules and regulations to me.

I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act. I consider it a real physical act. When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy. I move like a monkey. I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing.