Quote

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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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
Doesn
Transform
Become
Starts
Also
Serve
Persons
Painful
Person
Grief
Giving
Anyone
Indulgent
Something
Experience
Magnifying
People
Lost
Remembrance

More quotes by Patti Smith

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I'm certain, as we filled down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve years-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.
Patti Smith
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I don't think the average American understands what patriotism truthfully is. That's why when I attack our country or attack the government, it's sometimes looked at as unpatriotic. It's not.
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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Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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That's what artists do, that's what poets do - we all do it. We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything that we've made in order to get to the core place where we started from.
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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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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When you do controversial work, you're going to upset a certain amount of people.
Patti Smith
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New generations have unprecedented power to make great changes. Take the music business for example. The new generations have toppled the music industry by file sharing, downloading, and Myspace. Rock 'n' roll belongs to the people.
Patti Smith
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Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about.
Patti Smith
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People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.
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 don't think people should do biopics of living people. I'm totally opposed to that.
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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For Christmas every year, my mother used to give me those cheap little diaries that would tell your horoscope and provide a little blank slot for each day.
Patti Smith
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Ultimately, I want to make everyone horny.
Patti Smith
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I really don't want somebody writing something positive about me if they don't believe in it. I'd rather somebody write something real mean. I like reading bad stuff, it gets me excited. In fact, the only reviews I keep are the bad ones 'cause I think they're the cool ones.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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I always hope that young people will think for themselves and also most importantly, understand that they should judge themselves on their own merit, their good deeds, however simple, to not judge themselves by what they have materially, by what other people think of them, through social media.
Patti Smith