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 SMITHFor 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.
More Patti Smith Quotes
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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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Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
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I’ve always considered myself a writer.
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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.
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Writing is not some quiet, closet act.
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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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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.
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Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
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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.
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All I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
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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.
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Hail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.
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Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
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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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I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something.
PATTI SMITH