I Can Relate

"The light fell upon the pages of his coloring book, across his child's hands. Coloring excited him, not the act of filling space, but choosing colors no one else would select. In the green of the hills he saw red. Purple snow, green skin, silver sun. He liked the effect it had on others, that it disturbed his siblings. He discovered he had a talent for sketching. He was a natural draftsman and secretly he twisted and abstracted his images, feeling his growing powers. He was an artist, and he knew it. It was not a childish notion. He merely acknowledged what was his."

-Patti Smith on Robert Mapplethorpe, excerpt from, Just Kids