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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

Well, I’m not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I’m performing, that’s what I’m doing. If I’m not, I don’t long for it. I don’t need the approval of an audience, or applause.
PATTI SMITH

Limelight Long Need People Perform
With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn’t know who to work with.
PATTI SMITH

Collaborator Lost Photograph
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.
PATTI SMITH

Frustration Rock Star
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

Alien Gender People
Will you pretend you’re my boyfriend?
PATTI SMITH

Assume Boyfriend Hope Pretend
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

Eye Light Recognition Sleep
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

Actual Artist Human Matters
Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)
PATTI SMITH

Color Soul Vowel
I’m from South Jersey: The idea of eating a roll with olive oil and anchovies or some kind of sardine and drinking mint tea definitely comes from reading Paul Bowles.
PATTI SMITH

Drinking Idea Reading
I was always a tomboy as a kid. I always had boyfriends. I was just a regular girl growing up in the late ’50s and early ’60s, but I was never really attracted to what the girls were attracted to: makeup, my appearance, homemaking.
PATTI SMITH

Boyfriend Girl Growi Kid Tomboy
I’ve always considered myself a writer.
PATTI SMITH

Always Consider Myself Writer
People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone’s vision, because in the end, that’s what you got: your clay in someone else’s hands.
PATTI SMITH

Hand People Vision
Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.
PATTI SMITH

Horizontal Lines Neat World
I’ve always had a desire to write something and capture people’s imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.
PATTI SMITH

Imagination People Writing
I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something.
PATTI SMITH

Laureate Long Poet
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
PATTI SMITH

Fun Go Inspirational Letting

I’m a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I’m happy.

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I’m a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I’m happy.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Patti Smith Quotes