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 SMITHEverybody’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 SMITHA good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.
PATTI SMITHI’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 SMITHWill you pretend you’re my boyfriend?
PATTI SMITHDesire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
PATTI SMITHFor 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 SMITHI was never a singer, I can’t play any instruments, I had no training. Plus, I was brought up in a time when all the great rock stars were male. I didn’t have any template for what I was doing. I did what I did out of frustration and concern.
PATTI SMITHI 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 SMITHI was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.
PATTI SMITHShould I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted?
PATTI SMITHLife is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.
PATTI SMITHYou can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.
PATTI SMITHWith the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn’t know who to work with.
PATTI SMITHAll I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
PATTI SMITHI 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 SMITHI don’t know why, the very first word on my very first record is ‘Jesus.’ I still invoke him as an entity to reckon with.
PATTI SMITH