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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

• 

  I got over the loss of his desk and chair, but never the desire to produce a string of words more precious than the emeralds of Cortés.

  PATTI SMITH
  DesireEmeraldLoss
• 

  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
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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
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• 

  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
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  DarknessDreamSorrow
• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
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• 

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

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• 

  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
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• 

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

  PATTI SMITH
  ImaginationPeopleWriting
• 

  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
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• 

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

  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
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• 

  Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.

  PATTI SMITH
  MortalsPoetryRemember
• 

  I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.

  PATTI SMITH
  ChildrenNiceNight
• 

  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