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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the transformative power of imagination, especially during times of illness.
In this quote by Patti Smith, the author describes how her experiences with illness allowed her to tap into a deeper creative consciousness. She portrays a vivid connection between physical ailments and heightened imagination, suggesting that moments of struggle can lead to profound insights and artistic inspiration, akin to seeing beauty in the complexity of life.
Themes
ImaginationIllnessAwarenessArtCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
An artist could share this quote during a workshop about finding inspiration in difficult times.
More from Patti Smith
All quotes →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
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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Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
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I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.
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History has proven that art depicting black people cannot be disentangled from the political implications that such art has on their lives. As Africans were being stripped from the continent and sailed across the Atlantic to the Western world, depictions of black people in Western art changed in order to further render them racialized caricatures.
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Arrogant, I think I have written lines which qualify me to be The Poetess of America (as Ted will be The Poet of England and her dominions).
Sylvia PlathRead