the optimism of hope and being alive (30 December 2016)

Susan Saunders, Lower East Side, early '70s

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

- Patti Smith

Several children stop to drink the water from a leaking fire hydrant on Avenue C in the Lower East Side, New York, 1970.

I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment.

- Patti Smith

Alvin Baltrop, detail of The Piers (With Couple Engaged in Sex Act), 1975-86


Everyone has a creative impulse, and has the right to create, and should.

- Patti Smith

Judy Linn, Patti Smith in her Brooklyn apartment, 1971

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

Children fly a kite in a street bordered with fire-gutted buildings, South Bronx, New York City, 1977

Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.

- Patti Smith

Laura Knight, 34th Street and 7th Avenue facing North, New York, 1977


I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind ... I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.

- Paul Bowles

Smithereens (1982) directed by Susan Seidelman


How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

- Paul Bowles

Patti Smith, Untitled (Patti's father's cup)