Patti Smith Quotes

I want to be an artist, not be in the business of making hit records. Once I figured that out, everything became clear.

Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter. ... I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.

I’m not producing movies to make money

Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.

What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.

My goal was never to sell many records.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

There's a consistency in my work that pops up independent of the limitations of the technology.

You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?

When I was in high school, I was going to be a painter because I had a facility for painting. I could do it, but I didn't have anything to say in that medium.

My life is as an artist, not an entertainer. I don't consider myself an entertainer, but I can do that thing when I want to.

Miley Cyrus is about making money. Amanda Palmer is about making art.

If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it.

I remember I heard it in an interview with Michael Jackson one day, saying the art is gone, everybody makes records just to make a record. See, I always want the artist that try to build a whole body of music on one album, so you can enjoy it. So you could say, 'I went with him here, I went with him here.'

What's my dilemma here? Am I making entertainment or am I making art? What am I saying? At the end of the day, cinema is entertainment for millions of people, but for me it's expression.

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it's beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

None of my movies have ever made any money, so it's not about commercial success for me. It's always the same thing. I want to create something valuable, something unusual and different that the world has never seen.

As much as I enjoy traveling and playing on stage as an artist, I really find my true sense of purpose in a room writing a song.

I just wanna be a good artist.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

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.

There's certain artists that are meant to have certain paths and go the way of the corporate world. And then there are artists who are artists.

I think that for every artist, it's very important to have an output and to feel very strongly about the music you're producing.

It has always been important to me to be a creative artist, not to be a star, not to be rich, not to be famous.

I admire actresses who are willing to jettison the easy route toward exposure and commercial success as an actor in favor or a slow burn, choosing projects carefully, and building an artistic practice over time that feels specific to who they are as artists.