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That's what artists do, that's what poets do - we all do it. We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything that we've made in order to get to the core place where we started from.

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
Artist
Order
Poets
Place
Destroy
Everything
Core
Sometimes
Artists
Made
Poet
Something
Started
Start

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The two things that constantly inspired me were books and travel.
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In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot.
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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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We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.
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Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love.
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Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me.
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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 have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.
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I didn't write about aspects of my public life because that's a small part of my life.
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Blessedness is within us all.
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Everything distracted me, but most of all myself.
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By the time I was 10 or 11, I was completely demoralized. I thought, I'm done. I'm never going to be a missionary, because my indiscretion column, whether it was little lies or stealing a Chunky bar, kept me from sainthood.
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The truth is, no matter how modest Steven [Sebring] is, he was obsessed with the outcome of the film [Dream of Life]. Every single frame was important to him.
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To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.
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Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not.
Patti Smith
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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.
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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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Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.
Patti Smith
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First of all, anybody who has lasted 30 and went through the 60's is really a survivor.
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We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another.
Patti Smith