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In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.

Patti Smith

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Patti Smith
Age: 77
Born: 1946
Born: December 30
Composer
Drawer
Guitarist
Human Rights Activist
Musician
Photographer
Poet
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Visual Artist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Patricia Lee Smith
Life
Periods
Laundry
Like
Citizens
Tons
Learned
Toilets
Changed
Bowls
Everybody
Nurse
Nursed
Else
Hundreds
Cleaned
Live
Citizen
Diapers
Children
Period
Toilet

More quotes by Patti Smith

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My introduction to photography and a lot of how I developed aesthetically was through '50s and early-'60s fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
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I wanted to see who this Yeats person was, and I said to my mother, 'I want a book by this person.' And she bought it for me, and a lot of it was over my head, but I had it.
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Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.
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We tried not to age, but time had its rage.
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I like photographing dresses in windows. I actually wore a lot of dresses in the '70s. I like them on other people now.
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I have disciplined myself when I'm working. When I discovered art, I realized that one could keep that search going within creation. But I also realize that in order to create the art, you have to stay, you can't go too far.
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Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn't live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.
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Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.
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I love being alive. I like being a human being.
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I'm very comfortable with being a female now but when I was a little kid I only wanted to be a boy. I didn't want to be a girl. I didn't feel like a man inside... being a boy was just cooler.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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I don't think public life in and of itself can destroy you. I think it's the way people react to it, and some people are more sturdy than others... I don't think any one faction can be blamed for a person's self destruction - a certain amount of that has to be innate.
Patti Smith
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Some of us are born rebellious. Like Jean Genet or Arthur Rimbaud, I roam these mean streets like a villain, a vagabond, an outcast, scavenging for the scraps that may perchance plummet off humanity's dirty plates, though often sometimes taking a cab to a restaurant is more convenient.
Patti Smith
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Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.
Patti Smith
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I have abandoned so many projects but in the '80s when I left public life to be married and have real children - I love my children and I would never sacrifice them for anything - I had to find a way to simultaneously be a mother and wife and fulfill my duties and still be true to myself as a writer.
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People like beauty and purity. They pretend that's what it's all about.
Patti Smith
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I'm not afraid of terrorism at all. I'm afraid of loss of our freedom, loss of mobility, loss of global comradeship.
Patti Smith
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If I'm really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don't even think about brushing my hair.
Patti Smith
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I never thought of being a performer, never thought of being a singer, never thought of being a photographer. It's just the trajectory of my work. I go to the medium that serves the vision.
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As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
Patti Smith