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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

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More Patti Smith Quotes

• 

  Everybody’s got to reclaim these thingspoetry, rock’n’roll, political activismand it’s got to be done over and over again. It’s like eating: you can’t say,’Oh, I ate yesterday’.You have to eat again.

  PATTI SMITH
  PoliticalRockYesterday
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  AdventureDesignFate
• 

  The film [Dream of Life] doesn’t hide anything, except maybe moments of sorrow or darkness that belonged to me.

  PATTI SMITH
  DarknessDreamSorrow
• 

  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
  AlienGenderPeople
• 

  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
  ArtistEthicMoraleWork
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  ArtistHungeredProofStuff
• 

  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
• 

  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
  LiveMagicNaivePeopleThink
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  BookInspiredTwo
• 

  I’ve always had a desire to write something and capture people’s imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.

  PATTI SMITH
  ImaginationPeopleWriting
• 

  All I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.

  PATTI SMITH
  ChildrenWantWonderful
• 

  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
  ActualArtistHumanMatters
• 

  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
• 

  Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.

  PATTI SMITH
  ChildrenLipstickNeedRed
• 

  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
  CollaboratorLostPhotograph