Patti Smith Quotes

The freedom of every artist is essential.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

It's so nice to be totally artistically free.

I love this freedom that has been given to me as an artist to express myself.

I like artists to have some freedom.

If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.

I needed freedom to really express myself. That's really what Justified is about.

There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.

The nice thing about the world that I've been able to inhabit for the last couple of years is that I'm given a lot of freedom. Not all artists really get that.

Luckily, I don't have to be anybody but Yolanda, because people don't expect me to be anything other than who I am. For an artist, it's a great place to be.

Music I do just for me.

My sin as a painter is that I just want to paint anything I want to paint - and repaint.

I somehow sensed when I was a teenager that I wanted to do my own work. I was quite clear that I didn't want to be an interpretative kind of artist. I had an intuition about wanting to create my own form, in one way or another, whatever that would be.

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

My artistic manifesto exists in the world as poetry. So even though most of the things that I've done have been on other people's projects or could be pigeonholed in certain ways, that's not how I perceive myself.

Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.

I don't know, I really try not to pay attention to comparisons, 'cause I'm my own artist. I try to build my own sound.

I believe all of us should have the freedom to have our personal take on how art affects us.

I always maintain that artists do not have any responsibility to do anything except cause no harm and do whatever we want to do as artists.

For instance, I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting, because that's how I see life. I'm interested in art, poetry, and music. As that kind of artist, I can do anything. I can say anything. It's about self-expression. It knows no package - there's no such thing. That's what being an artist is.

Once I started reinventing for myself what being an artist was - not going into a studio, but making things on my own terms in response to being out in the world - I started to really enjoy it... I realized that everything else for me was hell.

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.