Top 450 Patti Smith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “People have the power to redeem the work of fools.”

— Patti Smith

2. “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

Featured in: Enjoy Life Quotes, Positive Quotes for Women, Wellness Wednesday Quotes, Life is Beautiful Quotes, Positive Morning Quotes

3. “Got to lose control before you take control.”

— Patti Smith

4. “Life is like a roller coaster. It’s never going to be perfect – it is going to have perfect moments, and then rough spots, but it’s all worth it.”

— Patti Smith

5. “Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.”

— Patti Smith

6. “Paths that cross will cross again.”

— Patti Smith

7. “Love is an angel disguised as lust.”

— Patti Smith

8. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.”

— Patti Smith

9. “Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.”

— Patti Smith

Featured in: Fun Quotes

10. “I didn’t waste my time on things I didn’t love.”

— Patti Smith

11. “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

12. “Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”

— Patti Smith

13. “The only thing you can count on is change.”

— Patti Smith

14. “No one expected me. Everything awaited me.”

— Patti Smith

15. “Punk rock is just another word for freedom.”

— Patti Smith

16. “I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.”

— Patti Smith

17. “Ultimately, I want to make everyone horny.”

— Patti Smith

18. “We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves.”

— Patti Smith

19. “I think guys are more emotional. Men are supposed to be the strong ones, they have pressure on them to be strong, but when it comes to sex men are much more emotional than women.”

— Patti Smith

Featured in: Strong Quotes

20. “Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.”

— Patti Smith

21. “All doors are open to the believer. It is the lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well.”

— Patti Smith

22. “Outside of society, if you’re looking that’s where you’ll find me.”

— Patti Smith

23. “I walk alone, assaulted it seems, by tears from heaven.”

— Patti Smith

24. “If you don’t have what you need, just rock with what you’ve got!”

— Patti Smith

25. “Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.”

— Patti Smith

26. “Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line – you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.”

— Patti Smith

27. “You can’t make a mistake when you improvise.”

— Patti Smith

28. “Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.”

— Patti Smith

29. “I think I’m constantly in a state of adjustment.”

— Patti Smith

30. “Words are just rules and regulations to me.”

— Patti Smith

31. “I’m an artist. I’m interested in how art gets made.”

— Patti Smith

32. “New York is the thing that seduced me. New York is the thing that formed me. New York is the thing that deformed me. New York is the thing that perverted me. New York is the thing that converted me. And New York is the thing that I love too.”

— Patti Smith

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

— Patti Smith

34. “We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.”

— Patti Smith

35. “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

36. “Deep in my heart how the presence of you shines, in a light to last a whole life through.”

— Patti Smith

37. “We need a new cosmology. New gods. New sacraments. Another drink.”

— Patti Smith

38. “The people have the power to redeem the work of fools. Upon the meek the graces shower, it’s decreed the people rule.”

— Patti Smith

39. “If you over-plan, you close the door on possibilities.”

— Patti Smith

40. “When you hit a wall, just kick it in.”

— Patti Smith

41. “One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.”

— Patti Smith

42. “I immersed myself in books and rock ‘n’ roll, the adolescent salvation...”

— Patti Smith

43. “We tried not to age, but time had its rage.”

— Patti Smith

44. “I don’t think the average American understands what patriotism truthfully is. That’s why when I attack our country or attack the government, it’s sometimes looked at as unpatriotic. It’s not.”

— Patti Smith

Featured in: Country Quotes

45. “An artist wears his work in place of wounds.”

— Patti Smith

46. “Question everything.”

— Patti Smith

47. “Good press, bad press, whatever, only means a lot to me if it’s writ by somebody I respect, by somebody I like.”

— Patti Smith

48. “I had gone to Paris to immerse myself in painting and I came back wholly involved in words and rhythms.”

— Patti Smith

49. “All doors are open to the believer. It is the lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well. In my sleepy state it occurred to me that if the well was a portal out, there must also be a portal in. There.”

— Patti Smith

50. “As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.”

— Patti Smith