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More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.
Patti Smith -
Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
Patti Smith
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I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist.
Patti Smith -
There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.
Patti Smith -
My mission is to stay healthy and productive and serve as a good example.
Patti Smith -
All I've ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.
Patti Smith -
Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
Patti Smith -
The cult of celebrity in the '60s and '70s was really more reserved for movie stars or high socialites. Paparazzi didn't care about Janis Joplin.
Patti Smith
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The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive.
Patti Smith -
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.
Patti Smith -
The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.
Patti Smith -
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 -
You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.
Patti Smith -
What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant.
Patti Smith
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No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
Patti Smith -
It was always my belief that rock and roll belonged in the hands of the people, not rock stars.
Patti Smith -
I didn't begin my life in 1975 with 'Horses.' I recorded 'Horses' in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969.
Patti Smith -
We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
Patti Smith -
People wouldn't know this about me, but I adore ball gowns. I love their cut, their architecture and the thought of the hands of so many seamstresses working on them.
Patti Smith -
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.
Patti Smith
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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.
Patti Smith -
I've lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.
Patti Smith -
My father was a dreamy fellow - he read Plato and Socrates and watched Phillies games.
Patti Smith -
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.
Patti Smith