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
Artists, musicians, scientists - if you have any kind of visionary aptitude, it's often something that you don't have a choice in. You have to do it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creative individuals often feel compelled to pursue their passions as a necessity rather than a choice.
In this quote, Patti Smith emphasizes that those with a visionary aptitude, such as artists, musicians, and scientists, are driven by an intrinsic need to create and innovate. It suggests that their talents and passions are not merely hobbies or professions but essential aspects of their identities that they cannot ignore, highlighting the powerful pull of creativity and discovery in their lives.
Themes
CreativityVisionNecessityArtPassion
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about innovation, you might quote this to emphasize the importance of pursuing oneβs passions.
More from Patti Smith
All quotes βMy 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 heavenβs 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
Similar quotes
What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.
Federico FelliniRead
Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.
Robert SchumannRead
There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.
Phil OchsRead
My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.
Odilon RedonRead
I just use fashion as an excuse to talk about politics. Because I'm a fashion designer, it gives me a voice, which is really good.
Vivienne WestwoodRead
The BAFTAs give the British point of view, and the Oscars give the American point of view, but the truth is we're all working in an international industry.
Ian MckellenRead