A Quote by Patti Smith
Steven [Sebring] just fell in with my family life. He helped me wash the dishes and play with the kids. I could tell that he was a person who understood families.
Related Quotes
The whole process of working with Steven [Sebring] and being filmed by him helped me psychologically to get my feet back on the ground.
Steven [Sebring] was documenting me as a widow with two children, going from 50 to 60 years old. My focus, during that time, was to rediscover myself, stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people.
If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, "Don't film me anymore," [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them; he just respected their wishes.
There are two ways to wash the dishes. One way is to wash them to get them clean. The other way is to wash them in order to wash the dishes.
I had met Michael Stipe, and he was such a kind person, and extremely understanding, so I asked him if he knew a photographer who would come to Detroit, where I lived, who would be child friendly and who would respect my home. Michael suggested Steven [ Sebring]. One day a knock came at my door, and when I opened it, there was Steven. He's been like a brother ever since.
I actually had another motivation for letting Steven [Sebring] film us. After I'd been out of the public eye for 16 years, lost my friends and lost my husband, some of my confidence had been undermined. Steven made the process of filming fun; I could pretend that we were in something like Don't Look Back.
I'm a tough person. I wasn't afraid of other kids because I understood that someday they'd wash my car.
The truth is, no matter how modest Steven [Sebring] is, he was obsessed with the outcome of the film [Dream of Life]. Every single frame was important to him.
There is no work better than another to please God: to pour water, to wash dishes, to be a souter [cobbler], or an apostle, all is one; to wash dishes and to preach is all one, as touching tho deed, to please God.
I spent nearly two decades as a social worker and an educator with kids. So, my whole life has been about helping middle-class families. So it's just kind of a hollow argument to say I'm not a family person.
[Steven Sebring] presence was also nice for my children, who, having just lost their father, quite naturally craved warm male attention. They gravitated to him right away.
Personally, I've never understood inactivity. Why a person would sit when he could soar, be a spectator when he could play, or atrophy when he could develop...is beyond me!
My first heartbreak devastated me, but it was the support of my family and my second family, my church family, that helped me understand that it wasn't my fault, and that everything was going to be alright. That helped me tremendously later in life because in this acting business, there are a lot of things beyond your control.
It was you that led me to the musical that's everything to me. You held my hands so that I can enter the world that I could only watch. When I fell, you helped me stand up. When the path was closed, you opened it up. You're that kind of person to me.
It's Steven's [Sebring] view of what he saw in traveling and working with me. But on another scale, I think the film [Dream of Life] is very humanistic: It touches on motherhood, death, birth, art, laundry, anger against the Bush administration... While I don't think it's the kind of film where one goes to find some of the darker, edgier aspects of life, the film was born of grief.
The welfare state has done to Black Americans what slavery (and Jim Crow and racism) could not have done. . .break up the black family. Today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two-parent families. Historically, from the 1870s on. . . 75-90 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families.
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