Patti Smith Quotes
- All Quotes
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Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.
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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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I was raised Jehovah's Witness. I was in Bible school at five or six years old, but I wouldn't say that we were a religious family.
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I voted for Obama. I was very happy when he won. But Obama hasn't really been able to effectively do anything that has made me... He hasn't helped the environment. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay. He went deeper into Afghanistan.
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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.
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I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
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Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
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Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand?
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My sunglasses are like my guitar.
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I never thought I was gonna live to 30.
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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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As I grew up, one of my strongest allies has been my sister.
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I'm not part of any movement; I don't like being fettered.
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I'm always writing. And, I mean, I always counsel people when they call me a musician: I really do not have the skills of a musician. I really don't think like a musician, though I love music and I perform and sing.
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I know that some people have different personas for the different things they do, and I'm not criticizing that - maybe it's a good thing - but I'm the same old person, so I take everything in stride.
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I personally am not interested in people trying to pigeonhole me.
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I've always thrived on the encouragement of others.
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People have the power to redeem the work of fools.
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To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.
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As an artist, I used to think that my responsibility was to do good work. But I had to learn from the '70s on that being a public figure presents another aspect of responsibility.
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My parents were very well read. They were both New Englanders, not highly educated, but they had a sophisticated... they were both very humanistic, and they were sophisticated readers.
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Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.
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My father's mother was from Liverpool and she had this very beautiful English china. I only wanted to drink my cocoa out of my grandmother's cup and saucer.
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When I stopped performing for 16 years and lived in Michigan and was married and raising my children, I wrote about four or five books. I haven't published them. I just haven't gotten around to it for several reasons.