I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art has a profound impact on our lives, and acknowledging this influence is essential, regardless of whether we understand it fully.
In this quote, Patti Smith expresses an ambivalence towards art's ability to shape our experiences and identities. The dialogue reflects a deep contemplation about the role of art in our lives, suggesting that it may possess a special power that can be both embracing and challenging. The idea that regretting the influence of art is foolish indicates a celebration of the transformative nature of artistic engagement, implying that even when one is unsure of art's effects, the beauty of the experience remains invaluable.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of art in personal growth.
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.
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.
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.
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
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.
Similar quotes
It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.
That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.
People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.
The main purpose of my work is to provoke people into using their imagination. Most people spend their lives in dreary, grey-beige conformity, mortally afraid of using colours. By experimenting with lighting, colours, textiles and furniture and utilizing the latest technologies, I try to show new ways to encourage people to use their phantasy and make their surroundings more exciting.
There are many different styles of, and approaches to, tap. My own leans towards a more intellectual view: tap dancing not just for the sake of entertainment but to educate and spark emotion.