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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: 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
Difficult
Artist
Human
Humans
Matter
Pursue
Matters
Actually
Times

More quotes by 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 was always a tomboy as a kid. I always had boyfriends. I was just a regular girl growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, but I was never really attracted to what the girls were attracted to: makeup, my appearance, homemaking.
Patti Smith
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I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.
Patti Smith
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I was so horny in school it felt like my body was filled with electricity. I felt like I had neon bones or something.
Patti Smith
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I've written a lot of prose. I just haven't published it.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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Life is an adventure of our own design intersected by fate and a series of lucky and unlucky accidents.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)
Patti Smith
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Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.
Patti Smith
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After writing all day I go for a walk and see a piece of architecture i want to photograph and i have to take a picture and later a poem comes in my mind.
Patti Smith
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The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.
Patti Smith
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Everybody's got to reclaim these thingspoetry, rock'n'roll, political activismand it's got to be done over and over again. It's like eating: you can't say,'Oh, I ate yesterday'.You have to eat again.
Patti Smith
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An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
Patti Smith
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People like beauty and purity. They pretend that's what it's all about.
Patti Smith
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Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
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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Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.
Patti Smith
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I can't bear working with a click track, we're not click track people. But for Mercy Is ... we all got in one mind because the song is delicate it's not a song that showcases a vocal or some virtuoso.
Patti Smith
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One thing I like about getting older is things, your spectrum widens, your capacity for compassion widens.
Patti Smith