I think really that's just the basic Christian lesson that sometimes takes us years and years to understand - have equal concern for another human being as you have for yourself or perhaps even more concern for another human being than you have for yourself.

Patti Smith

We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.

Patti Smith

shed skins

Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free.

Patti Smith

phones cells heart

I daydream a lot - that's how I get my ideas. If I'm sitting in a café, I'm not on my phone because I want to hear my mind. I think that those periods of small solitude that we are really losing are so important.

Patti Smith

phones ideas thinking

My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, to give them my energy and accept theirs. We're all in it together, and I respond emotionally as a worker, a mother, an artist, and a human being with a voice. We all have a voice. We have the responsibility to exercise it, to use it.

Patti Smith

responsibility mother exercise

Swift is the arrow, dark is the thorn, the slate is clean, the future awaits, awake.

Patti Smith

future arrows dark

Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.

Patti Smith

fate design adventure

You can't make a mistake when you improvise.

Patti Smith

drumming improvisation mistake

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

Patti Smith

letting-go fun inspirational

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.

Patti Smith

what-matters artist want

For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.

Patti Smith

sea believe children

People need space to air out their thoughts, to have a sense of themselves - unfettered by anything.

Patti Smith

space air people

If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.

Patti Smith

flames alive feelings

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.

Patti Smith

grief giving people

Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.

Patti Smith

interaction people

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

Patti Smith

wrong-words freedom writing

Life isn't some vertical or horizontal line -- you have your own interior world, and it's not neat.

Patti Smith

neat lines world

Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.

Patti Smith

answers doe time

Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency. Life is like a roller coaster ride, it is never going to be perfect. It is going to have perfect moments and rough spots, but it’s all worth it.

Patti Smith

successful names perfect

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.

Patti Smith

be-who-you-are rocks successful

The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.

Patti Smith

communication artist responsibility