Patti Smith Quotes

Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it.

Patti Smith

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Quotes to Explore

• What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

  

  Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
  • Good
  • True
  • Singing

• My coaches were great. My mom and dad. My dad never missed a wrestling meet.

  

  Dan Gable
  • Great
  • Dad
  • Mom

• To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.

  

  Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • World
  • Black
  • Youth

• See, I will always shop, and that's sort of a problem. Clothes are always exploding out of my closet!

  

  Zoe Lister-Jones
  • Problem
  • Clothes
  • Will

• I don't burn any calories trying to be masculine; I just happen to be from that world.

  

  Adam Carolla
  • World
  • Trying
  • Happen

• I do think that having the villain be a woman is just as feminine, because we're not just saying, 'Women are wonderful and made of marshmallows,' but women can be anything. They can be amazing superheroes, or they can be dastardly villains, and everything in between.

  

  Laura Benanti
  • Women
  • Amazing
  • Woman

• I don't know what drives me, I don't have a clue, but I'm driven more today than I ever have been.

  

  Vince McMahon
  • Today
  • Know
  • Me

• Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn't have much to say about how they'd make it right. They want your vote, but they don't want you to know their plan.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Friends
  • America
  • Happy

• He was not a runner, my father, but he was quick. I always remember it was very difficult to escape from him when he was angry. If he wanted to beat us he would always catch us. Even me, he could always catch me.

  

  Haile Gebrselassie
  • Remember
  • Father
  • Angry

• I will not go into a story unprepared. I will do my homework, and that's something I learned at an early age.

  

  Ed Bradley
  • Age
  • Story
  • Homework

• I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?'

  

  Tate Taylor
  • Life
  • Woman
  • Write

• Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.

  

  Ian Fleming
  • People
  • Together
  • Add

• Jews can build in New York, Moscow and Paris, but in our own land, we can't build? That's nuts.

  

  Naftali Bennett
  • New York
  • Paris
  • Jews

• The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

  

  Abel Ferrara
  • Like
  • Film
  • Happen

• I got to live out my 11-year-old fantasies - I got to go on stage with Green Day. Billie Joe called my name from the stage. 'Dookie' was the first album I ever bought. I covered the whole of 'Nimrod' and he'd heard it. That was like the 11-year-old girl dreamed.

  

  Florence Welch Florence and the Machine
  • Live
  • Girl
  • Day

• There was very little suicide among the men of the North, because every man considered it his duty to get killed, not to kill himself; and to kill himself would have seemed cowardly, as implying fear of being killed by others.

  

  Lafcadio Hearn
  • Men
  • Man
  • Fear

• Clinton's a schmuck.

  

  Abe Vigoda
  • Clinton
  • Schmuck

• No one is born hating others.

  

  Daisaku Ikeda
  • Born
  • Others
  • Hating

• When I got on stage, I felt this bolt of electricity hit me, and it was this shock of, 'This is exactly what I'm supposed to do with my life.'

  

  Rachel Platten
  • Life
  • Stage
  • Hit

• Beautiful language! Love's peculiar, own,But only to the spring and summer known.

  

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon
  • Beautiful
  • Summer
  • Spring

• I have been fighting the best. I am just 26 and have fought in the biggest arenas.

  

  Canelo Alvarez
  • Best
  • Fighting
  • Arena

• Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.

  

  Alexandra Kleeman
  • Writing
  • Friends

• The '60s was one of the first times the power of music was used by a generation to bind them together.

  

  Neil Young Buffalo Springfield
  • Music
  • Power
  • Together

• Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it.

  

  Patti Smith