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Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.
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
Dead
Write
Writing
Something
Would
Burns
Awake
Pursuit
Deeply
More quotes by Patti Smith
Deep in my heart how the presence of you shines, in a light to last a whole life through.
Patti Smith
My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, to give them my energy and accept theirs. We're all in it together, and I respond emotionally as a worker, a mother, an artist, and a human being with a voice. We all have a voice. We have the responsibility to exercise it, to use it.
Patti Smith
I didn't want any middle-of-the-road creep. I always wanted the toughest guy in school, the guy from south Philly who wore tight black pants. Y'know, the guy who carried the umbrella and wore white shirts with real thin black ties. I was really nuts over this guy named Butchie Magic 'cause he let me carry his switchblade.
Patti Smith
Sometimes [people] seem to think I came out of the womb, you know, cursing, with an electric guitar.
Patti Smith
Just because I've extricated myself from religion doesn't mean I'm not interested in the scriptures. I look at the Bible as itself. It's a holy book, it has incredible literature in it and beautiful poetry.
Patti Smith
I don't think the area of Jerusalem should be part of a Jewish state it belongs to all people, to Christians and Muslims and the Jewish people.
Patti Smith
I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.
Patti Smith
Horses pretty much broke as a record in England.
Patti Smith
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.
Patti Smith
I think really that's just the basic Christian lesson that sometimes takes us years and years to understand - have equal concern for another human being as you have for yourself or perhaps even more concern for another human being than you have for yourself.
Patti Smith
I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.
Patti Smith
I'm not really a nostalgic person.
Patti Smith
I know from an early age that I'm very comfortable in front of people. When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.
Patti Smith
No one expected me. Everything awaited me.
Patti Smith
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.
Patti Smith
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.
Patti Smith
When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.
Patti Smith
My sunglasses are like my guitar.
Patti Smith
In any performance, you're on stage for two hours, and there's 40 seconds or maybe a whole five minutes where you feel like the whole universe is in place, and you've gone even beyond the universe that you know.
Patti Smith
We're a culture more than ever that wants proof of everything, we want things fast, and someone sends you an email, you want to answer in five minutes. We have to allow ourselves nothingness, in our relationships too.
Patti Smith
