Patti Smith Quotes

There are those moments when you shake someone's hand, have a conversation with someone, and suddenly your all bound together because you share your humanity in one simple moment.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

Trust is to human relationships what faith is to gospel living. It is the beginning place, the foundation upon which more can be built. Where trust is, love can flourish.

While eschewing emotion - and its companion, vulnerability - Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the 'I feel your pain' connection that sustained Clinton. This connection is the shorthand people use to measure their leaders' intentions. If people believe you're on their side, they will trust your decisions.

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

I believe we are all connected to other people. I am connected to people who are suffering. We all are.

The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.

I think that sometimes we open our hearts a little more easily to animals than we do to each other.

I believe now that love is letting people in. Love is bigger than all of us.

I want somebody to hear my song and say, 'You know, man, I've been through that.'

The last page of [Lincoln in the Bardo] - without giving too much away - involves somebody entering somebody else. Not in a sexual way. But it says one of the simplest things you could ever say, which is that we must try and be inside each other. We must have some kind of feeling for each other and enter into each other's experience.

I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?

How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others... But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

Truth makes love possible; love makes truth bearable.

As people, we have forgotten to be people. We know how to be doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, we know what to do, we know what to buy, but how do I just sit with you in your pain? How do I sit with you in your vulnerability and not betray you, not abuse you? We do not know how to do that, even in our homes.

I was deeply interested in conveying what is a deeply felt conviction of my own. This is simply to suggest that human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity's sake.

A compassion swirled form nowhere in the high I was lost in. She needed me. She needed me to accept her for what she was. And when I realized that I had it within myself to give her at least this small part of me, the last of my fear melted away.

The human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.

The thing about storytelling is it's very stripped down; it's very much at the core of 'I'm a person and I'm just telling you this thing, and I need you to trust me and believe that what I'm saying is true, and if you believe that what I'm saying is true then we are connected to each other.' I think there's something really beautiful about that.

People who matter are most aware that everyone else does too.

Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.

I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.

I think my job is hopefully to connect with people emotionally and to feel less alone or understand things in a certain way.

I love human beings. I believe that there is so much to learn from every person you meet, including a child.

We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good if we talked... not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact; that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable.