One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.
PATTI SMITHOne day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.
PATTI SMITHEverybody’s got to reclaim these thingspoetry, rock’n’roll, political activismand it’s got to be done over and over again. It’s like eating: you can’t say,’Oh, I ate yesterday’.You have to eat again.
PATTI SMITHYou can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.
PATTI SMITHTrust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.
PATTI SMITHI 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 SMITHLife is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.
PATTI SMITHPolaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
PATTI SMITHWill you pretend you’re my boyfriend?
PATTI SMITHEven as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.
PATTI SMITHI’ve always had a desire to write something and capture people’s imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.
PATTI SMITHI felt alien my whole life but I didn’t feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.
PATTI SMITHI 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 SMITHWith the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn’t know who to work with.
PATTI SMITHWell, 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 SMITHPeople 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.
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.
PATTI SMITH