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My public life was so demanding that I wasn't doing the things that I deemed the most important.
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
Public
Important
Things
Life
Deemed
Demanding
Wasn
More quotes by Patti Smith
I was real religious when I was young. I wanted to be a missionary.
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I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.
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I was so involved in my boy-rhythms that I never came to grips with the fact that I was a girl. I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, You can't be outside wrestling without a T-shirt on. It was a trauma.
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I thought to myself that he contained a whole universe that I had yet to know.
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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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Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.
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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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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.
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Good news doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing. Bringing good news is imparting hope to one's fellow man.
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My father was always talking about God, and I idolized my father, so I'd spend hours trying to have mental telepathy with God.
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I wish I could just project everything on the paper.
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Steven's [Sebring] presence was not threatening he told me that if I never wanted the footage to be seen by anyone, he would give it to me. So I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and what I gained was his supportive energy and the supportive energy of his wife, who was sometimes the one schlepping the equipment or doing the sound.
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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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Within that moment was trust, compassion, and our mutual sense of irony. He was carrying death within him and I was carrying life. We were both aware of that, I know.
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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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You don't want to OD on improvisation.
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I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates.
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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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When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.
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I like my time on earth. And no matter what kind of cards I've been dealt, I'm happy to be there.
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