I 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 SMITHWhat a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had.
More Patti Smith Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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Writing is not some quiet, closet act.
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Trust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.
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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)
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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.
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With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn’t know who to work with.
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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.
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Should I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted?
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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.
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Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.
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Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
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A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.
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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