"You can't work on that scale without trust. I learned that from working with Robert Mapplethorpe."
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Quote collection
Patti Smith quotes (page 12 of 23)
456 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I love to photograph the tools of one's trade: Duncan Grant's paintbrushes, the typewriter of Herman Hesse, or even my own guitar, a 1957 Fender Duo-Sonic."
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"It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)"
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"One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal."
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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 love being alive. I like being a human being."
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"I believe we all have a unique journey, whether its a journey of pure energy, if there's any intelligence within the journey. But I think each of us have our own way of dissipating or entering a new field."
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"I was quite an insomniac. I rarely slept as a child. Having God to talk to at night was nice."
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"Outside of society, if you're looking that's where you'll find me."
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"Fate is like a secret friend that helps push you on into life."
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"I was never a singer, I can't play any instruments, I had no training. Plus, I was brought up in a time when all the great rock stars were male. I didn't have any template for what I was doing. I did what I did out of frustration and concern."
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"...heroine: the artist, the premier mistress writhering in a garden graced w/highly polished blades of grass... release (ethiopium) is the drug...an animal howl says it all...notes pour into the caste of freedom...the freedom to be intense...to defy social order and break the slow kill monotony of censorship. to break from the long bonds of servitude-ruthless adoration of the celestial shepherd. let us celebrate our own flesh-to embrace not ones race mais the marathon-to never let go of the fiery sadness called desire."
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"I like energy. I like to feel it cracklin', I like sexual energy in a room, and I like tension."
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"I was always a tomboy as a kid. I always had boyfriends. I was just a regular girl growing up in the late '50s and early '60s, but I was never really attracted to what the girls were attracted to: makeup, my appearance, homemaking."
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"I always wanted to be an artist, writer and poet since I was seven, and one has to live long enough to evolve as an artist and do one's finest work."
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"Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause."
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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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"One thing I did have under my belt was, my mother lost her mother when she was 11. She mourned her mother her whole life and made my grandmother seem present even though I never met her. I couldn't imagine how my mom could go on but she did, she took care of us, she worked two jobs and had four children. She was such a good example of how to conduct oneself in a time of grief. When I lost my husband, I tried to model myself as much as I could on her."
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"John Coltrane, he talks to god. He starts playing his solo, he might play for 14 minutes. For 14 minutes, it seems like he's talking to god, but he always takes a hold of the melody."
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"I really feel concerned about young people within our present culture. Our present culture, we have to change. Change is inevitable and I wasn't raised in our present culture but it has great pressure that as a young person I never had. Material pressure, social pressure, visual pressure, how you look, and I just try to appeal to young people to think for themselves, to be their own person, and to ask questions and also be very attentive to our planet and our environment."
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