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You can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Patti Smith

I’m not really a nostalgic person.
PATTI SMITH

Nostalgic Person Really
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

Actual Artist Human Matters
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

Art Piece Sexually Thinking
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

Collaborator Lost Photograph
Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.
PATTI SMITH

Horizontal Lines Neat World
Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.
PATTI SMITH

Adventure Design Fate
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

Desire Emerald Loss
I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.
PATTI SMITH

Believe Hand Mind
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

Eye Light Recognition Sleep
I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something.
PATTI SMITH

Laureate Long Poet
I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.
PATTI SMITH

Loneliness Space Understood
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 SMITH

First Jesus Record
Will you pretend you’re my boyfriend?
PATTI SMITH

Assume Boyfriend Hope Pretend
Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)
PATTI SMITH

Color Soul Vowel
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

Drinking Idea Reading
Hail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.
PATTI SMITH

Brother Distant Future Heart
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

Artist Ethic Morale Work
Writing is not some quiet, closet act.
PATTI SMITH

Closets Quiet Writing
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
PATTI SMITH

Fire Love Romantic
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

Alcohol Causes Drug
Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.
PATTI SMITH

Children Lipstick Need Red
Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
PATTI SMITH

Pocket Two World
I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
PATTI SMITH

Artist Hungered Proof Stuff
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.
PATTI SMITH

Couple Father Loss
All I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
PATTI SMITH

Children Want Wonderful
A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.
PATTI SMITH

Artist Hand Zipper
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
PATTI SMITH

Fun Go Inspirational Letting

You can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.

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You can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.

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Popular Authors

More Patti Smith Quotes