How wonderful it would be to meet an angel, I mused, but then I immediately realized that I already had. Not an archangel like Saint Michael, but my human Angel from Detroit, wearing an overcoat and no hat, with lank brown hair and eyes the color of water.

— Patti Smith

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. Furthermore, I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen.

— Patti Smith

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. Furthermore, I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won't, that we are different. As a child I thought that I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old?

— Patti Smith

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.

— Patti Smith

I come from a real working class background, and I didn't know anyone sophisticated - except I saw Die Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy!

— Patti Smith

I didn't love Jim Morrison 'cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new.

— Patti Smith

I don't fuck much with the past, but I fuck plenty with the future.

— Patti Smith

I get irritated with the world. I get irritated with politicians. Furthermore, I get very irritated with governments and with corporations, but in terms of imagination - my imagination is always fertile. Furthermore, I'm either thinking of my own things or constantly engaged by the things that other people do.

— Patti Smith

I had no concept of what life at the Chelsea Hotel would be like when we checked in, but I soon realized it was a tremendous stroke of luck to end up there. We could have had a fair-seized railroad flat in the East Village for what we were paying, but to dwell in this eccentric and damned hotel provided a sense of security as well as a stellar education. The goodwill that surrounded us was proof that the Fates were conspiring to help their enthusiastic children.

— Patti Smith

I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one

— Patti Smith