Patti Smith Quotes

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

There's a great difference between being popular and being an artist.

Art has never been a popularity contest.

People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There's a lot of emperor's new clothes out there, whether they're female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It's hard to break through, and it's like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.

A lot of the conceptualists and the prestige galleries are debasing themselves in presentations which have little else to them but the presentation.

No artist wants to be perceived as a regurgitator.

It's not ideal when art is seen as just some passing entertainment quickly thrown out into the market, like a consumer object. You have to let things settle and think about them.

I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.

You can't please everyone... If you make a good movie, that's all that matters.

The way I choose projects is based on what I think is most real and most interesting, not on what's paying the most money or what's most popular.

Despite whatever commercial kind of success you might have or radio success, I don't want to do something just to get as many people as possible to listen.

If a musician is making a mediocre, self-indulgent body of work, they have to know that, for the most part, people aren't going to be interested.

I'd rather have people really be able to step back and get their money's worth and look at me as a true artist than somebody who is just regurgitating other material.

If you are too overwhelmed, then when you sit down and try to write something, it feels forced. There's nothing worse than forced music. I mean, this world has enough of that right now, where it's basically McDonald's making music. 'Everybody needs another hamburger and fries.' Here's a piece of crap that nobody's gonna care about it two years.

The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original.

There are values on Broadway that are dangerous: it's got to be Best Musical, it's got to make money, it's got to run a certain amount of time. Nowhere in this, of course, is there any mention of quality.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

I've always been fussier than I can afford to be. I don't just want to do whatever it takes to be successful, I want to do what I consider to be good stuff. If I'm not engaged in something, it doesn't matter what it is and who's doing it.

I know my music probably isn't going to matter to the public after I die, but that doesn't mean I don't have something to offer.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.

The great artist is a slave to his ideals.

To bring a large audience to a piece of serious music and make it accessible does not mean reducing it in any way. And I've learned that if something is good, even if it is a little difficult, people will get that it is good.

I don't necessarily go out and try to do something that's going to be just something that will please the audience. I'm not interested in doing something where I get the most people to come see the movie at the same time and they get the biggest explosion. I'm not interested in that.

What I never want to do is start phoning it in and making things just to show that I can keep my foot in the door and do big movies.

I can make a record with six-part string arrangements and the best musicians in the world and have it be not genuine. I'd rather make a genuine record that I truly stand behind and have it fall where it may.