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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

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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
Wanted
Book
Yeats
Bought
Head
Mother
Persons
Person

More quotes by Patti Smith

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I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story.
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 walk alone, assaulted it seems, by tears from heaven.
Patti Smith
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Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.
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 never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female I'm an artist.
Patti Smith
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I'm pretty moral about what I do. If I didn't think I was worthy of doing something, I wouldn't do it. I ain't gonna waste a bunch of people's time.
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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It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him.
Patti Smith
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I remember when you were born, it was dawn and the storm settled near my belly. And I rolled in the grass and spit out the gas, and I lit a match and the void went flash. And the sky split and the planets hit, balls of jade dropped and existence stopped.
Patti Smith
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Talking to god and coming back because that's what we have to do. That's your responsibility as a director, as an artist, as a performer. Your responsibility is back again to your people.
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 realize that people need something to believe in.
Patti Smith
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The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.
Patti Smith
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Life is like a roller coaster. It's never going to be perfect - it is going to have perfect moments, and then rough spots, but it's all worth it.
Patti Smith
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I don't feel that censorship keeps me from doing the work, though. I'm my bigger censor.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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The film [Dream of Life] looks at a time in my life.
Patti Smith
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We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.
Patti Smith
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I'm very comfortable with being a female now but when I was a little kid I only wanted to be a boy. I didn't want to be a girl. I didn't feel like a man inside... being a boy was just cooler.
Patti Smith