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My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me.

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
Ever
Roll
Firsts
Hated
First
Liked
Real
Stones
Never
Argument
Rock
Rocks
Father
Rolling

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Spare the child and spoil the rod, I am not sellin' myself to god.
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My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.
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I didn't have any career design. I was not thinking about publishing or doing a record. I was just working. I was evolving. I wanted to really comprehend what I was doing before stepping too far out.
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I'm okay with roaming around the world in my bunk for days on end. Maybe every third day I'll get a shower or stumble out at dawn and realize I'm in a field in Poland. I like that kind of life.
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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 don't think people should do biopics of living people. I'm totally opposed to that.
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I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.
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I've always had a desire to write something and capture people's imagination like Peter Pan had captured mine.
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When I was a teenager, I had trouble getting a boyfriend, so I imagined Arthur Rimbaud or Bob Dylan as my boyfriend.
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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.
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The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.
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All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
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The film [Dream of Life] is the way it is because it was the rhythm of my life, and also because the director and the editor are both gifted and both fine human beings.
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Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.
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I know from an early age that I'm very comfortable in front of people. When I was a young girl, I'd love giving book reports.
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I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.
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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.
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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.
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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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