Patti Smith Quotes
- All Quotes
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An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.
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I love playing the Fillmore. I love the walk from the hotel and climbing up those old, iron stairs that lead to the stage. I imagine Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors and all those other great bands climbing those same stairs.
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We tried not to age, but time had its rage.
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You can't change the world; you can't fix the whole environment. But you can recycle. You can turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth. You can do small things.
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Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.
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Usually when I go to a place for the first time, unless there's something historical or spectacular that nature has to offer, the first thing I like to do is see what's on the minds of the people.
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Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.
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Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
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Of course, every artist has 'minor works' that they do, but I don't think I have any 'minor disciplines.' Each discipline I approach as a major undertaking that I put my whole self into.
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I remember the first club we played in San Francisco. There were a lot of people on motorcycles standing around outside, and I had trouble getting in. I didn't have any ID, and the guy at the door wouldn't let me in, even though I told him I was gonna be singing in there.
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I knew William Burroughs really well, and I was always star struck being around him. I adored him.
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I was a sickly child, not very strong physically. I wasn't really the greatest in school. I didn't really excel in anything particularly. But I was happy with who I was.
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The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.
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My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations. She's an environmentalist, she plays piano, she's raising money for the earthquake victims in Nepal. Every day she surprises me and teaches me something.
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My sunglasses are like my guitar.
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Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.
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I have bigger concerns than what pop stars are doing. I'm more concerned about our environment, what industrialists are doing to it.
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The thing is that any sophistication I have, aesthetically, comes from 'Vogue' and 'Harper's Bazaar.' In the '60s, I never missed an issue, even if I had to steal to get them.
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Christianity made us think there's one heaven.
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The thing is that as you grow through life, the pursuit of art and the pursuit of new ideas, all these things keeps your mind elastic.
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I've always looked the same. Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
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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.
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I was in musical comedy. And I did very well, but the memorization killed me. I'm not good at memorizing, and it gave me a lot of anxiety. I hated the makeup. I hated all that pancake makeup. I didn't really like dressing for parts.
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I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.