"I wasn't taking drugs or drinking. I was working and working and working. But I wasn't writing anything."
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Quote collection
Patti Smith quotes (page 8 of 23)
456 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Nothing is a hobby - each discipline is its own world with its own high standards. Of course, every artist has 'minor works' that they do, but I don't think I have any 'minor disciplines.'"
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"I wasn't thinking so much of music. I wasnt thinking so much of perfection or stardom or any of that stuff."
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"I love my little overgrown yard. And my house is wonderful. It's everything that I need."
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"In the period where I had to live the life of a citizen - a life where, like everybody else, I did tons of laundry and cleaned toilet bowls, changed hundreds of diapers and nursed children - I learned a lot."
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"America is run by corporations, it is run by banks and Wall Street. That's why we can't get guns under control. It's because all these lobbyists don't want gun control, they don't want us to have strong environmental safety guards. Young people can become aware of that and they are the most powerful lobby. With a click of a text, you can have millions of people voting for one person."
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"A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester."
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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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"I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife."
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"My mother answers all my fan mail."
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"Maybe I'll be 48 and die in the gutter in Paris."
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"Light inspires me. I'm drawn to architecture, often graves, statues, trees - things usually that are quite still. I've been taking pictures continuously since 1995 until the end of Polaroid film. I'm taking very few pictures nowadays because I have very little film left, most of it expired."
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"I have a daughter who's 11 years old. Maybe she'll grow up independent and really really heavy and become a movie star and she'll play me in my life story."
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"The idea of redemption is always good news, even if it means sacrifice or some difficult times."
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"I wasn't writing, I wasn't drawing, and personality-wise, I was just completely arrogant. I'm not trying to be overly apologetic for my behavior - I wasn't evil. The lifestyle I had was one that lent itself to becoming more and more self-involved."
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"My introduction to photography and a lot of how I developed aesthetically was through '50s and early-'60s fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue."
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"I'm from South Jersey: The idea of eating a roll with olive oil and anchovies or some kind of sardine and drinking mint tea definitely comes from reading Paul Bowles."
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"The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication."
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"The best thing is to motivate people to do their own work. I'm not opposed to making money. But I started to play rock 'n' roll to motivate others, to shake things up, wake people up and to let other skinny, pimply marginalized weirdos know they're not alone."
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"Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."
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