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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.

Patti Smith

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Patti Smith
Age: 78
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
Matters
Actually
Times
Difficult
Artist
Human
Humans
Matter
Pursue

More quotes by Patti Smith

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Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
Patti Smith
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Everyone thinks of God as a man - you can't help it - Santa Claus was a man, therefore God has to be a man.
Patti Smith
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We never had any children, he said ruefully. Our work was our children.
Patti Smith
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Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
Patti Smith
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I'd never had people drive me around, and then all of a sudden, if a car didn't come, I'd say, Where's my car?
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.
Patti Smith
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I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realize that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.
Patti Smith
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I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.
Patti Smith
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Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed.
Patti Smith
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Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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I studied the Bible seriously until I was young teenager. It was always part of our home education: talking about the Bible, arguing about the Bible, interpreting it. So I don't connect prayer or scriptures with any particular religion so it's not a contradiction in my life.
Patti Smith
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Blessedness is within us all.
Patti Smith
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I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life] it gives the film a certain elegance.
Patti Smith
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Look at Obama - he is now [2015] trying to help us environmentally but he should have done it eight years ago. He's trying to salvage his legacy and trying to do something good but we needed for him to show leadership from day one.
Patti Smith
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One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal.
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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I've always had a desire to write something and capture people's imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.
Patti Smith