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 know that some people have different personas for the different things they do, and I'm not criticizing that - maybe it's a good thing - but I'm the same old person, so I take everything in stride.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects an understanding and acceptance of different personas people adopt, while emphasizing authenticity and consistency in one's true self.
Patti Smith highlights the idea that individuals often have various personas that they present in different contexts, which may serve useful purposes. However, she expresses her preference for remaining true to her core identity, suggesting that embracing one's genuine self can lead to a more straightforward and fulfilling life, where challenges are met with resilience and grace.
Themes
AuthenticityPersonasIdentityResilienceSelf
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to inspire people to embrace their true selves.
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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