Writing is not some quiet, closet act.
PATTI SMITHI had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
More Patti Smith Quotes
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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 -
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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Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.
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I’m a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I’m happy.
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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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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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I think it’s important for people to realize that we were all young, all naive, and also we had lived in a time that had magic.
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I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replaced it with trust.
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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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The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.
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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.
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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.
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Will you pretend you’re my boyfriend?
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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 -
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