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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
Stills
Used
Stranger
Young
Bible
Still
Wasn
Wells
Bits
Well
Quite
Hard
Read
Times

More quotes by Patti Smith

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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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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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My introduction to photography and a lot of how I developed aesthetically was through '50s and early-'60s fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
Patti Smith
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We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.
Patti Smith
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I like photographing dresses in windows. I actually wore a lot of dresses in the '70s. I like them on other people now.
Patti Smith
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With the death of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had lost my main collaborator in taking photographs. So I didn't know who to work with.
Patti Smith
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We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.
Patti Smith
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What will happen to us? I asked. There will always be us, he answered.
Patti Smith
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Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love.
Patti Smith
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I was raised in rural south Jersey, and there was no culture there. There was a small library, and that was it. There was nothing else.
Patti Smith
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Paths that cross will cross again
Patti Smith
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If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, Don't film me anymore, [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them he just respected their wishes.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith
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The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.
Patti Smith
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People say hello to me. I mean, sometimes the sanitation truck goes by and says, hey Patti.
Patti Smith
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In any performance, you're on stage for two hours, and there's 40 seconds or maybe a whole five minutes where you feel like the whole universe is in place, and you've gone even beyond the universe that you know.
Patti Smith
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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
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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
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I gave you a wrist watch, baby, and you wouldn't even give me the time of day.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith