Patti Smith Quotes

Whatever mistake you have made about who you are is temporary. Your true identity has remained untouched. You have never sinned against it or affected it in any way except to lose touch with it.

The outsider is not sure who he is. He has found an “I”, but it is not his true “I”.’ His main business is to find his way back to himself.

I understand that nobody understands me, but I can't be someone I'm not.

Life may more than once call upon you to prove Who You Are by demonstrating an aspect of Who You Are Not.

Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.

I studiously avoided all so-called "holy men." I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own. I would have felt it as a theft had I attempted to learn from the holy men and to accept their truth for myself. Neither in Europe can I make any borrowings from the East, but must shape my life out of myself-out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me.

Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if school had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everone.

I didn't have an identity. It was manufactured. My identity now? It was written on the wall by ancient forces.

The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is.

If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.

There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.

If you did nothing but pursue the truth about yourself for the rest of your life, you would never run out of fresh discoveries.

Don't go outside; get back to yourself, in the inner man lies the Truth.

In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.

How to feel your way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of your skull.

To search for truth about self is as valuable as to search for truth in other areas of life.

How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?

No one can teach that which is inside another, each person must find it on his own and find a way to express it.

I changed my name because it didn't fit with the way I saw myself.

Some rather seek up high Than dig and grind that inner truth

I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don't know the way out.

... and it's always been a thing with me to feel that all men know the truth, see? ... The truth itself doesn't have a name on it. To me. Each man has to find this for himself, I think. I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be... I'm not interested in trying to say what it will be, I don't know. But I believe that good will only bring good.

Seeker of truth follow no path all paths lead where truth is here.

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.