• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

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

Related Topics

HandPeopleVision

Popular Authors

Marilyn Monroe Paulo Coelho Abraham Lincoln C. S. Lewis Khalil Gibran Charlie Chaplin Gautama Buddha Isaac Newton

| Next

More Patti Smith Quotes

• 

  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
  ArtistNothingSubjectTwo
• 

  One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.

  PATTI SMITH
  DayOneTogetherWork
• 

  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
  DrinkingIdeaReading
• 

  My father came a couple of times, but he always blamed his hearing loss on my loud amplifiers. So he didn’t come anymore, but I had his support.

  PATTI SMITH
  CoupleFatherLoss
• 

  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
  BoyfriendGirlGrowiKidTomboy
• 

  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
  LimelightLongNeedPeoplePerform
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  HorizontalLinesNeatWorld
• 

  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
  PocketTwoWorld
• 

  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
  EyeLightRecognitionSleep
• 

  Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.

  PATTI SMITH
  FireLoveRomantic
• 

  I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

  PATTI SMITH
  ArtistHungeredProofStuff
• 

  The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.

  PATTI SMITH
  BookInspiredTwo
• 

  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
  ArtPeriodPointTalkZoos
• 

  Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

  PATTI SMITH
  FunGoInspirationalLetting
• 

  I’m not really a nostalgic person.

  PATTI SMITH
  NostalgicPersonReally
• 

  For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your horoscope and provide a little blank slot for each day.

  PATTI SMITH
  GiveHoroscopeMotherYear