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A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.

Patti Smith

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
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
I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something.
PATTI SMITH

Laureate Long Poet
Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
PATTI SMITH

Mortals Poetry Remember
One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.
PATTI SMITH

Day One Together Work
All I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
PATTI SMITH

Children Want Wonderful
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

Limelight Long Need People Perform
The film [Dream of Life] doesn’t hide anything, except maybe moments of sorrow or darkness that belonged to me.
PATTI SMITH

Darkness Dream Sorrow
You can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.
PATTI SMITH

Good Scales Trust Zipper
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
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

Communicate Embrace Need People
I’ve always had a desire to write something and capture people’s imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.
PATTI SMITH

Imagination People Writing
I’m not really a nostalgic person.
PATTI SMITH

Nostalgic Person Really
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
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

Art Period Point Talk Zoos
The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.
PATTI SMITH

Book Inspired Two

A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.

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A good artist’s always got his hand in his zipper.

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