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I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

Patti Smith

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

Animate Art Period Talk Zoo
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 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
Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.
PATTI SMITH

Adventure Design Fate
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
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
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
Trust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.
PATTI SMITH

Artist Nothing Subject Two
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

Give Horoscope Mother Year
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
Hail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.
PATTI SMITH

Brother Distant Future Heart
Will you pretend you’re my boyfriend?
PATTI SMITH

Assume Boyfriend Hope Pretend
I 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 SMITH

Frustration Rock Star
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
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 had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

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I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.

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