"Today she enjoys a bit of social engagement, but not too much. In one sense she is a loner, taking early morning walks...."

"A Europhile who writes, paints and takes pictures as well as making records, [Patti] Smith produces the kind of cerebral work the art world gobbles up.... Her body is a wiry, charged thing that appears to take its heat from the crowd and what she describes as the 'unconditional energy' of the young. More young people flock to see her every year.... This month she will perform to a sell-out crowd at St Paul’s Cathedral. When she comes off stage she doesn’t want to talk to people because she is likely to be rude — and these days she doesn’t like being rude. Smith told Bob Dylan that poetry sucked when she first met him in her late twenties. That tale is true; others aren’t. 'I’ve read the same stories repeated and expanded,' she says. 'The guy from Kiss said I slapped him across the face. I never did!'"

From "Patti Smith at 77: ‘I’m not a 21st-century person’/The punk priestess on her Seventies heyday, US politics — and why she’s happily reconciled with the daughter she gave up for adoption at 19" (London Times).

The quote in the headlines appears in this context: "I’m not a nationalistic person, I’m not even a 21st-century person. I grew up in the Sixties when we all listened to the same music and those who had any goodness in them were all for civil rights. We all wanted to end the war in Vietnam."