Patti Smith Quotes

There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

I think for every artist it's important to always keep this amount of doubt until the very last day of shooting.

I never quite dare to believe I'm brave enough to be an artist, but I'm on the side of artists. I think of myself as a bit of a Salieri, looking with longing eyes at Mozart.

I never really consider myself as a great artist. I just always like to draw.

We don't know why we should be artists, but we have many reasons why we can't be.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow.

Right now, I'm known for making movies. And I wonder if that's it. I don't know. It doesn't feel like it to me.

When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.

There were a million different things I could have chosen or wanted to do, but the path of an artist was the one that pulled me the most. I did local theater and plays in school. I think there was a sense of entertaining - being on the stage, making people laugh, making people cry - that I was drawn to. It was also one of those things like, "I can do this for a very long time."

I used to want to be a war photographer, and I used to want to be a ballerina and a comedian. I used to want to be a writer. I invalidated myself; it’s a mistake for me. [...] There’s just a lot of stuff that really moves me, and I don’t know how to express it, and I just want to try to do the best I can and surround myself with good people who don’t invalidate me.

Early in school, they called me 'the artist.' When teachers wanted things painted, they called upon me, they called upon 'the artist.' I am not saying that I learned my name, animals can learn their names, I am saying that they learned it.

I was in analysis and I told my analyst I wanted to be the best sculptor in the world and he said, 'Richard, calm down.'

It is so much worse to be a mediocre artist than to be a mediocre post-office clerk.

I wanted to become a painter for a while. I think it was because I was lazy.

I've always defined myself as a writer, I've never decided what it was I was gonna write. [...] I always fancied myself one, but I'm not. I'm so far from a writer.

You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.

Talent seduces us into interpretation. My sister could draw wonderfully, but she would never have hit upon the idea of becoming a painter. I never had that extreme talent.

A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

My family was not an artistic family, but somewhere in my head, I thought I might be good at it. I don't know why I thought it. I had no evidence to think I might be good at it.

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

Maybe he was real. Maybe I'd made him up. Either way, he didn't think I needed him anymore. Maybe he was right.

I wasn't sure I was an artist, so I thought maybe I just was throwing ideas out for people to consider.

He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.

Every song that I start to write, I wonder if I'll be able to write it.