A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.
PATTI SMITHHail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.
More Patti Smith Quotes
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Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
PATTI SMITH -
I’m a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I’m happy.
PATTI SMITH -
I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.
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I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.
PATTI SMITH -
I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
PATTI SMITH -
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.
PATTI SMITH -
So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.
PATTI SMITH -
Trust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.
PATTI SMITH -
Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.
PATTI SMITH -
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.
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I felt alien my whole life but I didn’t feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.
PATTI SMITH -
Should I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted?
PATTI SMITH -
I started resenting how much art robs from life. I’d go to a party and I couldn’t enjoy myself, even sexually. All I could think was how I was going to reinvent the experience into a piece of art.
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Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
PATTI SMITH -
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.
PATTI SMITH







