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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.

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
Rocks
Singer
Lethargy
Singing
Opera
Connor
Songs
Holiday
Downtrodden
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Teenager
Approaching
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Singers
Chris
Christy
Kind
Roll
June
Callas
Never
Jazz
Mystical
Billie
Like
Rock
Dreamed
Maria

More quotes by Patti Smith

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I always enjoyed doing transgender songs.
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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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My public life was so demanding that I wasn't doing the things that I deemed the most important.
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A good artist's always got his hand in his zipper.
Patti Smith
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I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
Patti Smith
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Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.
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Why do people want to know exactly who I am? Am I a poet? Am I this or that? I've always made people wary. First they called me a rock poet. Then I was a poet that dabbled in rock. Then I was a rock person who dabbled in art.
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If we keep our little flame alive, our first feeling of enthusiasm of who we are, without the influence or intervention of others, we will prevail.
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There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.
Patti Smith
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Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
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I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life] it gives the film a certain elegance.
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I studied the Bible seriously until I was young teenager. It was always part of our home education: talking about the Bible, arguing about the Bible, interpreting it. So I don't connect prayer or scriptures with any particular religion so it's not a contradiction in my life.
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I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.
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'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.
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Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.
Patti Smith
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When I perform, I always opt for communication with God, and in pursuit of communicating with God, you can enter some very dangerous territory. I also have come to realize that total communication with God is physical death.
Patti Smith
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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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As a child I was such an intense daydreamer I could be so gone that I had to be smacked to come back. They were really worried that I had some kind of catatonia or something because I would go so far out. Because all I wanted to do was talk to god as a child.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith