Like Jean Genet, Robert was a terrible thief. Genet was caught and imprisoned for stealing rare volumes of Proust and rolls of silk from a shirt maker. Aesthetic thieves. I imagined his sense of horror and triumph as bits of Blake swirled into the sewers of New York City.

— Patti Smith

Patti Smith Quotes

Lisbon is a good city to get lost in. Mornings in cafes scribbling in yet another notebook, each blank page offering escape, the pen serving, fluid and constant. I sleep well, dream little, simply exists within an uninterrupted interlude.

— Patti Smith

That’s the one with the magic, he would say.

— Patti Smith

I felt like Alice with the Mad Hatter, negotiating jokes without punch lines, and having to retrace my steps on the chessboard floor back to the logic of my own peculiar universe.

— Patti Smith

What is the heart but a small hand of agonies?

— Patti Smith

I seldom visit people’s homes, for despite the hospitality offered I often suffer a feeling of confinement or imagined pressure.

— Patti Smith

It occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

— Patti Smith

Despite all efforts, February just slips away, though being a leap year there is one extra day to observe.

— Patti Smith

A stretch of time when I was rewarded with so many mystic moments, a chunk of red chalk, a chestnut, a rusted piece of scrap metal, a nail, a flat stone shaped like an ancient tablet. Although suggesting little of the magnificent work I had seen, these objects helped inspire my newfound contentedness. I placed them with the same care as a police detective into a clean plastic bag. Evidence of an awareness of the relative value of insignificant things.

— Patti Smith

The act of writing in real time in order to deflect, escape, or slow it down is obviously futile yet not entirely fruitless.

— Patti Smith

The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive.

— Patti Smith

But then everything eventually changes. It’s the way of the world. Cycles of death and resurrection, but not always in the way we imagine. For instance, we might all resurrect looking way different, wearing outfits we’d never be caught dead in.

— Patti Smith

I have always hated loose ends... If I read a book or see a film and some seemingly insignificant thing is left unresolved, I can get remarkably unsettled, going back and forth and looking for clues or wishing I had a number to call or that I could write someone a letter. Not to complain, but just to request clarification or to answer a few questions, so I can concentrate on other things.

— Patti Smith

I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo.

— Patti Smith

The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.

— Patti Smith

I dreamed I was somewhere that was also nowhere.

— Patti Smith

Certain books I loved and lived within yet cannot remember.

— Patti Smith

I didn’t mind the misery of a vocation but I dreaded not being called.

— Patti Smith

He had ignored nature and now turned to her for his salvation, and set about to make peace with her, bowing to her mysteries.

— Patti Smith

In his heartlessness he had ignored nature, and how heartless nature was in return.

— Patti Smith

Nothing really matches the atmosphere of the old Polaroid film. Except perhaps a poem, a musical phrase, or a forest hung with mist.

— Patti Smith
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