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 style says, 'Look at me, don't look at me.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the tension between self-expression and vulnerability in artistry.
Patti Smith's quote encapsulates the duality of an artist's desire for attention and the simultaneous fear of exposure. It suggests that while artists seek to showcase their individuality and captivate their audience, they often grapple with the inherent risks that come with that attention, revealing their innermost thoughts and identities to the world.
Themes
ArtIdentityExpressionVulnerabilitySelf
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote as a prompt in an art class discussion about the complexities of self-identity in artistic expression.
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.
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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.
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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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