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When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.

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
Write
Detectives
Young
William
Wells
Straightforward
Well
Novel
Writing
Knew
Really
Quite
Never
Secret
Burroughs
Desire
Detective

More quotes by Patti Smith

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When I was working on the lyrics, I thought of all the lullabies we learn as children: Away in the Manger, William Blake's lullabies. I realized that the key to lullabies is simplicity.
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Life is like a roller coaster. It's never going to be perfect - it is going to have perfect moments, and then rough spots, but it's all worth it.
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I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn't mean that we didn't have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor.
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Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.
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I always thought my father [influenced me most] because he was so well read, I tried to model myself on him, but really as I go through life I realise it was my mother who gave me the most valuable instructions. I didn't understand or accept it at the time. She taught me to read and to pray - two things that have really stayed with me.
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Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.
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No one expected me. Everything awaited me.
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We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark.
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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.
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People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
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So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.
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I think masturbating is a really important function in art. People don't like to hear that kind of stuff, but it's true.
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Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
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I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.
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A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth I liked flannel and not polyester.
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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.
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More than anything that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.
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New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.
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Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.
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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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