Patti Smith Quotes

I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality.

The individual - man as a man, man as a brain, if you like - interests me more than what he makes because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.

What is interesting about me isn't that I am a mother, it is who I am. I love my family, but if I just talk to you about being a mother, it's boring. I am sorry, but it's reducing who I really am, and it's really boring.

All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.

It is very important to know who you are. To make decisions. To show who you are.

In every role, a part of me gets to come out.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

As children, we think our mother has always been a mother, but it is just one of the roles you may have the opportunity to play. They don't define you as a human being.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

People want to know more about me. They want to know who I am.

Fighting for identity is something that is very much in my life.

There are different sides to me; I wanted to make a personal film but I would not want to make any film that does not reflect me in it. At least, not right now. I'm just too young to be doing that.

I'll never be August Wilson - but what I can be is more of myself.

I never like to think that I design for a particular person. I design for the woman I wanted to be, the woman I used to be, and - to some degree - the woman I'm still a little piece of.

My work is intensely personal.

I've never, ever labeled myself.

I want to do what I can lend my talents to, but I want it to be as a human being and not as a two-dimensional character.

I wanted what I was doing to be really true to me and my tastes. That's what 'Worlds' was, me taking a break from what I was doing and doing something that was honest, authentic and real.

There are a lot of layers to me.

Ultimately, I'm not doing that much. I'm only doing what a human being who feels wants to do - in my way, without stepping out of my flow, while staying in my lane. Without, I guess, boring people.

I'm trying to know who I am and be honest about it.

My self encompasses a lot of different things.

For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.