"People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything."
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Quote collection
Patti Smith quotes (page 6 of 23)
456 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"An artist is somebody who enters into competition with God."
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"People need space to air out their thoughts, to have a sense of themselves - unfettered by anything."
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"We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity."
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"Punk rock is just another word for freedom."
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"No, my work does not reflect my sexual preferences, it reflects the fact that I feel total freedom as an artist."
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"The only way I can lose my mind in bed is to destroy myself in a fantasy."
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"I know fashion is a material thing, but we live in a material world and I love clothes."
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"It will not fall away. Man cannot judge it. For art sings of God, and ultimately belongs to Him."
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"Remember, we are mortal, but poetry is not."
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"Artists are traditionally resistant to labels."
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"I have seen a lifetime of transgender people and it was hard enough being gay in the '50s and early '60s. One couldn't imagine the cruelty that trans people had to face back then."
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"Hopefully if you create something fine, people will relate to it, so you're communicating with people, and you're not in a void. On the other hand, because you're always creating and transforming, art always separates you - always."
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"Lets just say that I think any person who aspires, presumes, or feels the calling to be an artist has a built-in sense of duty."
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"Blessedness is within us all."
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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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"In fact, I thought my calling was to be a painter."
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"We all make choices. Believe me, I would like to write the hit of the world. It's not like I have any desire to be in the shadows. My vision isn't marketing. Some people want to sell 6 million albums. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just not what I do. I'd rather look at a piece of work and say it's great rather than it's successful."
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"I think I'm constantly in a state of adjustment."
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"When I'm on my own with my camera, taking these pictures, it feels as if I am in a room of my own, a self-contained world."
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