Patti Smith Quotes

My interests still are my interests. That doesn't make me a bad mother. I think that makes me a really good mother, because when I go and creatively satisfy myself and those interests, I come home satisfied.

When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected move again only you don't remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself.

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.

My priority is my son and my husband, and I have a lot of spinning plates, so I try to make sure they're not one of them.

My first job now is as a mother, everything else is secondary. My kids understand that I am an actress, and they are always so surprised to hear my voice on a cartoon character, or see my face on a video box. If it ever gets to be too much though, the career and the kids, I will simply set the career aside.

It takes as much discipline to be a mother and a wife as it does to do anything else.

I adore acting; it's in my blood - quite literally - but I can honestly say the most creative thing in the world for me is being a mother.

Sometimes I think I might have children while I'm still working, but then I think I'd better wait until I can give them all I want to give.

I am less selfish. But I am more insistent on being part of the creative experience. I find I am a better mother, lover and wife when I am writing. When my daughter was small I wasn't writing as much and I didn't miss it.

I love being a mother. I think it's the best thing I've ever done, and I personally feel that it's had a very positive effect on my work. I think it's an encouraging force for creativity, it feeds creativity - it did for me, certainly.

Being a wife and a mother is very gratifying, but it's not a creative expression and that's something I need to be happy.

I like being a mother, and I want to be involved in my work, so I have to make choices. If you're a film actress, your career is from 20 to 45, but you can still dream.

I am lucky in that my children are grown, my youngest is twenty-seven. I didn't have the conflict between artist and mother while they were young because I really focused in, very much, on the mothering aspect.

It was by coincidence that I ended up opening my first shop in 1968, and I haven't stopped since. I now find myself trying to do everything. I couldn't live without creating my collections, without writing, drawing and reading. But I couldn't either live without being close to my children on a daily basis and also to my grandchildren, and to all the people I love. I guess I am like every woman today, one who juggles her work and family life.

Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman.

If I cannot give my children a perfect mother I can at least give them more of the one they've got--and make that one more loving. I will be available. I will take time to listen, time to play, time to be home when they arrive from school, time to counsel and encouerage.

I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

When children are little, they really need you in one way. When they're bigger, they need you as a friend. And balancing motherhood and career makes you both a better mother and a better businesswoman.

I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the cafe. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother -- cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await.

Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life's duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.

Basically, I thought for a very long time that making music and art projects, that that was just something that I did, and real life was separate. And I'm starting to realize that the things that I do, making music and art and photography and all that, it's not just something that I do. It's who I am. So I don't think I'll ever be able to stop. It's like that curse that you live with, this thing that you love but you also hate it at the same time. It brings you a lot of joy but also a lot of heartbreak.

I've never understood women who, because of their children, pose as victims and don't allow themselves any other activities.

When you have kids and you're married...you know, life takes its toll on you after a while, and then you're just not as creative, you're not as motivated... And it takes a special person when it's time to dig down and do a record, to really go in there and pour out whatever it is you got in you to put on a record, and that's what we did.

I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world.

Fame stole my yellow. Yellow is the color you get when you're real and brutally honest. Yellow is with my kids[...]The bundle of bright yellow warming my core, formerly frozen and uninhabitable[...]They got yellow from me, and I felt yellow giving it to them and it was all good[...]So, why am I leaving my show? It took my yellow. I wanted it back. Without it I can't live. The gray kills me.