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
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Feeling different or outside of societal norms can lead to introspection and self-discovery.
Patti Smith's quote reflects the experience of feeling like an outsider, which is a common sentiment among individuals who perceive themselves as unique or different from the rest of society. This feeling can foster a deeper understanding of oneβs identity and encourage artistic expression, as it highlights the complexities of belonging and individuality.
Themes
OutsiderDifferentIdentityBelongingIndividuality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about mental health to highlight the struggles of feeling different.
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
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
My son and daughter lost their father quite young, so we keep him present with us. It's just a daily practice.
Patti SmithRead
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Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.
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I think I'm learning how to release every day. Recognizing that everything you encounter, touch, or love can become part of you, and in essence never disappears, as long as you can recall it to memory or heart. It's all so connected that we lose everything, but also, we never lose anything.
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After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that!
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Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William JamesRead