Patti Smith Quotes

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.

I was a boy when I first realized that the fullest life liveable was a Poet's.

I don't feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it's one's particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I've written songs on everything. Menus. Napkins. Little pieces of paper.

I was a weird kid. It wasn't until I saw 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God' at 16 that my whole world changed. The obsession with that was equal to the obsession with writing.

After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your walk.

To love is to transform; to be a poet.

I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.

I've got magic. I've got poetry at my fingertips.

I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.

I write not for your farthing, but to try. How I your farthing writers, may outvie.

I've always been doing stuff, being creative. But I got to the point where I starting to feel this longing, craving, itchy feeling - which was the first sign that it was time. I've made a few attempts to make other solo records, but when I've looked back at the body of work I've always felt like I was never quite there.

I went out under the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal.

I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.

Poetry is a peerless proficiency of the imagination.

My question is "when did other people give up the idea of being a poet?" You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?

I love creating. I am addicted to the drug of creation and creating things. I get a little depressed when I am struggling to find what I know is locked inside. If it's a lyric or something that is challenging me, I can be very depressed, but when it's like heaven opens up and it gives you a song, it's amazing. There's nothing else that I enjoy more probably.

A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive.

I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20.