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Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.

Patti Smith

You can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.
PATTI SMITH

Good Scales Trust Zipper
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

Artist Nothing Subject Two
I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
PATTI SMITH

Artist Hungered Proof Stuff
Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
PATTI SMITH

Mortals Poetry Remember
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
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

Pocket Two World
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
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
In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one’s work caged in art’s great zoos – the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?
PATTI SMITH

Art Period Point Talk Zoos
I’ve always considered myself a writer.
PATTI SMITH

Always Consider Myself Writer
I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.
PATTI SMITH

Loneliness Space Understood
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
In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one’s work caged in art’s great zoos – the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?
PATTI SMITH

Animate Art Period Talk Zoo
I think it’s important for people to realize that we were all young, all naive, and also we had lived in a time that had magic.
PATTI SMITH

Live Magic Naive People Think
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
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

Artist Ethic Morale Work

Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.

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Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.

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Popular Authors

More Patti Smith Quotes