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I was so used to doing art that my fingers were like albino spiders. So it was just natural for me to go to a typewriter and write poetry.

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
Natural
Write
Art
Albino
Used
Typewriter
Writing
Typewriters
Like
Spiders
Fingers
Poetry

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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)
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I liked being on stage, I just didn't like the theatrical aspect of being in front of people.
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Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.
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I was real religious when I was young. I wanted to be a missionary.
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John Coltrane, he talks to god. He starts playing his solo, he might play for 14 minutes. For 14 minutes, it seems like he's talking to god, but he always takes a hold of the melody.
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Artists are traditionally resistant to labels.
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What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong.
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I wanted to remember the original energy strip away all the glamour and limousines and tons of drugs. I wanted to get back to the revolutionary ideas, merging poetry and rhythm and rock and roll.
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I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.
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I like energy. I like to feel it cracklin', I like sexual energy in a room, and I like tension.
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New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.
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Fate is like a secret friend that helps push you on into life.
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The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.
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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.
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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.
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If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, Don't film me anymore, [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them he just respected their wishes.
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I was like one of the boys in school who flap their legs frantically under the desk. I always had this weird feeling between my legs and I had no idea what it was. I didn't know girls masturbated. I never touched myself or anything.
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My parents had three kids right after the Second World War, and we were all sort of sickly. Then I had a fourth sibling, with very serious asthma. The medical bills... So my parents always struggled.
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I never really wanted to be a singer - not with any longevity. But I always wanted to be a writer.
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Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
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