Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
PATTI SMITHDesire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
More Patti Smith Quotes
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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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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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I’m not really a nostalgic person.
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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?
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I’m okay with roaming around the world in my bunk for days on end. Maybe every third day I’ll get a shower or stumble out at dawn and realize I’m in a field in Poland. I like that kind of life.
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Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
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Writing is not some quiet, closet act.
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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 -
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 -
I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one.
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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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Hail brother, the distant thunder is nothing but hearts beating as one.
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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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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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I’ve always considered myself a writer.
PATTI SMITH