I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti SmithRead
In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Embrace creativity and dreams while maintaining balance in reality.
Patti Smith's quote emphasizes the importance of exploring the realms of art and imagination freely, without reservations, while also advocating for a grounded approach in life that requires careful navigation and balance. It suggests that artistic expression thrives on abandon, but our everyday actions should be measured and thoughtful to achieve harmony.
Themes
ArtDreamBalanceLifeCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at an art exhibit, one could say, 'As Patti Smith puts it, in art we find freedom, but in life, we must tread carefully.'
More from Patti Smith
All quotes →My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heaven’s kaleidoscope.
Patti SmithRead
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
Patti SmithRead
Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.
Patti SmithRead
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
Patti SmithRead
No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
Patti SmithRead
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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