Inspirational Quotes

Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.

Patti Smith Quotes

My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself get up and take a deep breath and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets.
CreativityIndividualityResistance To Conformity Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
ArtCallingSelf-Discovery In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter.
AmbitionGrowthPerseveranceWork Ethic I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
HealthLeadershipProductivityService My mission is to stay healthy and productive and serve as a good example.
ArtAspirationCallingCreativityResponsibility Let's just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty.
CreativityInnovationMemoryPerceptionValue of Art Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
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.
Robert Mapplethorpe, I met in 1967. He was a student at Pratt, though even as a student a fully formed artist. We went through many things in our life together. He became my loved one, then my best friend.
ArtBalanceDreamLifeStealth In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
CreativityExpressionRights Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.
We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
Everyday LifeGrowthLearningLife LessonsResponsibility In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.
It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars.
Personality TraitsSelf-awareness I'm not a very analytical person.
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.
When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.
What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had.
I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.
AppreciationDiscoveryEnjoymentOptimismPositivity 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.
EnduranceExperienceHistoryResilienceSurvival First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
When I was young, I was offered my first recording contract in 1971 and was offered quite a bit of money if I would change my character and be a '70s version of Cher.
The cult of celebrity in the '60s and '70s was really more reserved for movie stars or high socialites. Paparazzi didn't care about Janis Joplin.
I was never a singer; I can't play any instruments; I had no training. Plus, I was brought up in a time when all the great rock stars were male. I didn't have any template for what I was doing. I did what I did out of frustration and concern.
I have a lot of energy, and I like to work.
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.
My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.
FaithHistoryInfluenceMusicSpirituality I was studying Francis of Assisi for quite some time, when Benedict was still the pope. And I was studying it for a song that I did for my last album, 'Banga.'
Creativity And ArtLife and DeathMemory And LegacyPersonal Journey Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.
Family StrugglesFinancial HardshipHealth ChallengesResilience My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills... So my parents always struggled.