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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

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
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
I’ve always had a desire to write something and capture people’s imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.
PATTI SMITH

Imagination People Writing
I was always a tomboy as a kid. I always had boyfriends. I was just a regular girl growing up in the late ’50s and early ’60s, but I was never really attracted to what the girls were attracted to: makeup, my appearance, homemaking.
PATTI SMITH

Boyfriend Girl Growi Kid Tomboy
You can’t work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe.
PATTI SMITH

Good Scales Trust Zipper
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.
PATTI SMITH

Around Dawn Roaming World
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
Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
PATTI SMITH

Mortals Poetry Remember
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’m not really a nostalgic person.
PATTI SMITH

Nostalgic Person Really
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
PATTI SMITH

Fire Love Romantic
The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.
PATTI SMITH

Book Inspired Two
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
Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
PATTI SMITH

Fun Go Inspirational Letting
Everybody’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 SMITH

Political Rock Yesterday
Even as a child, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to wear red lipstick.
PATTI SMITH

Children Lipstick Need Red

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.

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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Patti Smith Quotes