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Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.

Patti Smith

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.
PATTI SMITH

Artist Ethic Morale Work
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.
PATTI SMITH

Alcohol Causes Drug
I felt alien my whole life but I didn’t feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.
PATTI SMITH

Alien Gender People
Should I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted?
PATTI SMITH

Path Questions Twisted Unanswered
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

Art Period Point Talk Zoos
Trust is everything between two artists, or between subject and artist. You have to have trust or nothing good will come out of it.
PATTI SMITH

Artist Nothing Subject Two
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.
PATTI SMITH

First Jesus Record
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

Limelight Long Need People Perform
The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.
PATTI SMITH

Book Inspired Two
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
Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.
PATTI SMITH

Horizontal Lines Neat World
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.
PATTI SMITH

Hand People Vision
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

Actual Artist Human Matters
I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice.
PATTI SMITH

Children Nice Night
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
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

Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.

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Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.

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Popular Authors

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