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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

• 

  Will you pretend you’re my boyfriend?

  PATTI SMITH
  AssumeBoyfriendHopePretend
• 

  I’ve lost many, many friends through natural causes, through alcohol, through drugs, through AIDS. And every time I lose a friend or a loved one, it reminds me how great life is.

  PATTI SMITH
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• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  ChildrenWantWonderful
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  DarknessDreamSorrow
• 

  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
• 

  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
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• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  BookInspiredTwo
• 

  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.

  PATTI SMITH
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• 

  Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)

  PATTI SMITH
  ColorSoulVowel
• 

  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
• 

  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
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• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  ArtistHungeredProofStuff
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
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• 

  I’m okay with roaming around the world in my bunk for days on end. Maybe every third day I’ll get a shower or stumble out at dawn and realize I’m in a field in Poland. I like that kind of life.

  PATTI SMITH
  AroundDawnRoamingWorld
• 

  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