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

More quotes by Patti Smith

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For me, personally, I think drugs are sacred and should be used for work. That's what I believe in. Drugs have a real shamanistic value. I can handle drugs. I've never had a problem.
Patti Smith
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I'm a total failure at housewifery. I always have been, 'cause I daydream too much. If I start doing the dishes at one in the afternoon, I'll still be there at six in the evening.
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I'm from South Jersey: The idea of eating a roll with olive oil and anchovies or some kind of sardine and drinking mint tea definitely comes from reading Paul Bowles.
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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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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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Hopefully if you create something fine, people will relate to it, so you're communicating with people, and you're not in a void. On the other hand, because you're always creating and transforming, art always separates you - always.
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For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.
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I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.
Patti Smith
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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 [people] seem to think I came out of the womb, you know, cursing, with an electric guitar.
Patti Smith
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I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.
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Nothing is a hobby - each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has 'minor works' that they do, but I don't think I have any 'minor disciplines.'
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I realize that people need something to believe in.
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Your soul was like a network of spittle.
Patti Smith
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As a child I was such an intense daydreamer I could be so gone that I had to be smacked to come back. They were really worried that I had some kind of catatonia or something because I would go so far out. Because all I wanted to do was talk to god as a child.
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My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me.
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We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.
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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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First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
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People say hello to me. I mean, sometimes the sanitation truck goes by and says, hey Patti.
Patti Smith