Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
Patti Smith
Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.
People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
My style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'
You can't change the world; you can't fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. You can do small things.
The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times.
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.
I didn't know Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse, but I was affected by both of their deaths because I admired their work so much and mourned their youth and work they would never produce.
As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer.
In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all these things keeps your mind elastic.
What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.
Sometimes you're doing really well, then, after three or four years, everything inexplicably crashes like a house of cards and you have to rebuild it. It's not like you get to a point where you're all right for the rest of your life.
My sunglasses are like my guitar.
It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars.
I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.
There is hardly a place in New York that you can't walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I've been all over the world. There's no place like that but New York City.
Good news doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man.
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.
I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
From very early on in my childhood - four, five years old - I felt alien to the human race. I felt very comfortable with thinking I was from another planet, because I felt disconnected - I was very tall and skinny, and I didn't look like anybody else, I didn't even look like any member of my family.
I've said this over and over, but I'll say it a million more times - I'm concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we're losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides.
My mother answers all my fan mail.
Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.
Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it.
For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your horoscope and provide a little blank slot for each day.
An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.
I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake - a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music.
I've always looked the same. Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.
I was raised Jehovah's Witness. I was in Bible school at five or six years old, but I wouldn't say that we were a religious family.
We tried not to age, but time had its rage.
Nothing will stifle your human evolution more than fame and fortune.
I haven't had the most thrilling lifestyle. I was a pretty good dresser, but I would have a pretty boring 'Behind the Music.'
Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.
I was actually born in Chicago, and then when I was a toddler, my parents moved to Philadelphia.
'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular.
I know what that tastes like, to be a rock-and-roll star - to have a limousine, to have girls screaming when they see you, girls trying to cut my hair, get a piece of me. But I don't walk around with a concept of myself as a rock-and-roll star, and certainly not as a musician, because I really can't play anything, except primitively.
I didn't love Jim Morrison 'cause he was self-destructive. I loved him because of his work. Because of the way he merged poetry and rock-and-roll. Because he did something new.
I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.
Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.
I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.
Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.
People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.
