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I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.
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
Used
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Young
Bible
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More quotes by Patti Smith
I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
Patti Smith
Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.
Patti Smith
The things I thought would happen didn't. Things I never anticipated unfolded.
Patti Smith
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
People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone's vision, because in the end, that's what you got: your clay in someone else's hands.
Patti Smith
I like energy. I like to feel it cracklin', I like sexual energy in a room, and I like tension.
Patti Smith
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.
Patti Smith
I always thought my father [influenced me most] because he was so well read, I tried to model myself on him, but really as I go through life I realise it was my mother who gave me the most valuable instructions. I didn't understand or accept it at the time. She taught me to read and to pray - two things that have really stayed with me.
Patti Smith
We never had any children, he said ruefully. Our work was our children.
Patti Smith
We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world.
Patti Smith
Hopefully if you create something fine, people will relate to it, so you're communicating with people, and you're not in a void. On the other hand, because you're always creating and transforming, art always separates you - always.
Patti Smith
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
An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
Patti Smith
I felt alien my whole life but I didn't feel alien because of my gender. Other people made me aware of my gender.
Patti Smith
So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.
Patti Smith
I really don't want somebody writing something positive about me if they don't believe in it. I'd rather somebody write something real mean. I like reading bad stuff, it gets me excited. In fact, the only reviews I keep are the bad ones 'cause I think they're the cool ones.
Patti Smith
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.
Patti Smith
I hate to be enclosed. I don't like bathroom doors - I don't shut them. In fact, in my house, I have no doors.
Patti Smith
As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.
Patti Smith
What will happen to us? I asked. There will always be us, he answered.
Patti Smith
