PATTI SMITH

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

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

If your label won't let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!

I remember when the Bic pen was controversial. They came from France. They were cheap, and when one was out of ink, you threw it away; you didn't dip it into more ink.

I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

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.

I try not to give too much advice, really, because people have to do their things their way. I got lots of advice when I was young, and I ignored most of it - the good and the bad.

I was actually born in Chicago, and then when I was a toddler, my parents moved to Philadelphia.

I loved being a rock and roll star, but it wasn't what I wanted in life.

My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.

I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.

As a citizen, hopefully I'm humanist. As an artist, I'm free.

Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.

I felt alien my whole life, but I didn't feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.

I was born in 1946, so I was born on the tail end of when everything was deemed important. You made things to last. If you came from a poor family, there was only one can opener.

There is hardly a place in New York that you can't walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I've been all over the world. There's no place like that but New York City.

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

An artist wears his work in place of wounds.

I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

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

When I was young, I was offered my first recording contract in 1971 and was offered quite a bit of money if I would change my character and be a '70s version of Cher.

The thing is that any sophistication I have, aesthetically, comes from 'Vogue' and 'Harper's Bazaar.' In the '60s, I never missed an issue, even if I had to steal to get them.

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.