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I find it painful when I'm without anything. But I work in multiple fields. If I can't write, I find myself taking photographs. I can go on the road and perform. But the most important thing for me is writing, and when I hit those walls, it's painful.

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
Write
Walls
Anything
Perform
Find
Photograph
Without
Painful
Important
Road
Writing
Fields
Thing
Wall
Photographs
Work
Taking
Multiple

More quotes by Patti Smith

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I'm an artist. I'm interested in how art gets made.
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The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication.
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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.
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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.
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All the traumas I went through separating art from writing don't exist anymore. That's why I love being in rock 'n' roll. It's a whole life thing.
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The film [Dream of Life] looks at a time in my life.
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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.
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All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
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I've lost many, many friends through natural causes, through alcohol, through drugs, through AIDS. And every time I lose a friend or a loved one, it reminds me how great life is.
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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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I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.
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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.
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Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris.
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Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.
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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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Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.
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Sometimes I get lost in watching a film. The sorrow, or the frustration, is when it doesn't happen for a long time.
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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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Spare the child and spoil the rod, I am not sellin' myself to god.
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I have seen a lifetime of transgender people and it was hard enough being gay in the '50s and early '60s. One couldn't imagine the cruelty that trans people had to face back then.
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