The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.

— Patti Smith

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.

— Patti Smith

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

— Patti Smith

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.

— Patti Smith

Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.

— Patti Smith

We didn’t have to talk then, and that is real friendship. Never uncomfortable with silence, which, in its welcome form, is yet an extension of conversation.

— Patti Smith

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. Furthermore, we feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.

— Patti Smith

We want things we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment, sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.

— Patti Smith

We were as Hansel and Gretel, and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.

— Patti Smith

What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.

— Patti Smith