Patti Smith Quotes

In our opposed forms of loneliness and self-recognition and recognition of the other, we touched each other often as we spoke; and on shore in explorations of the past, we strolled with our arms linked.

In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.

One hardly dares to say that love is the core of the relationship, though love is sought for and created in relationship; love is rather the marvel when it is there, but it is not always there, and to know another and to be known by another - that is everything.

Always before, I just said no, left it solidly there. I waver now. I want to share everything with him. Want to know what he knows, feel what he feels, share the same space he's in.

Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

In a relationship when things are really great you don't need to say anything and just enjoy the other person. Sometimes with a couple, it gets dark and you don't know what to say and that silence can last all day. Other times you don't want to stop talking because you don't want to lose one another.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

The more connections you and your lover make, not just between your bodies, but between your minds, your hearts, and your souls, the more you will strengthen the fabric of your relationship, and the more real moments you will experience together.

The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.

My work is about the establishment of trust. For someone to share their authenticity with me is a soul-to-soul thing. It's not a lens-to-soul thing.

I mean, I come from a hippie mentality where I just think to know someone, you need to look into their eyes. Eyes are so important. Until they start melon-balling eyes out, I won't be able to get to know someone another way.

Knowing is the most profound kind of love, giving someone the gift of knowledge about yourself.

There is an instinct that emerges when we get quiet with people. We know who's close.

I'm kind of private and I keep things inside a lot, but it's been so wonderful to realize that people care about you in a very deep way and that there is some bond between an actor and his audience. I don't even know how to describe that feeling.

Any time you have intimacy with someone, there is something between them.

It's very hard to meet somebody that you're comfortable with who really knows you.

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

Friendship is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. It is a bond beyond common goals, common interests, or common histories. It is a bond stronger than sexual union can create, deeper than a shared fate can solidify, and even more intimate than the bonds of marriage or community. Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or decrease the sorrow. It is a unity of souls that gives nobility and sincerity to love. Friendship makes all of life shine brightly.

Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together.

You really know a person when you sleep so near to them, or when you eat with them.

I love being free enough that I can be so intimate with people, and that people are free enough that we can all be intimate with each other!

It's an industry of lonely people in a crowd, Bill Margold was saying. 'They're scared to get close to each other. You're far better off having someone to sleep next to then having someone to sleep with because you have to trust someone you sleep next to.

You know," I told him on our wedding night, "I'm just as much me when I'm with you, as I am without you." And because Hardy understood what I meant, he pulled me into his arms, against his heart.

Only if there is love, if hearts are opened, can one person truly know the other.