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
An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Artists and ordinary citizens face different challenges that are often unrecognized by each other.
This quote by Patti Smith highlights the unique struggles faced by both artists and ordinary citizens, suggesting that while artists deal with specific burdens tied to their creative endeavors and societal expectations, ordinary citizens navigate their own set of challenges that are often overlooked by those in the artistic community. It invites a deeper understanding and appreciation of the diverse experiences each group undergoes, emphasizing that empathy should extend across different walks of life.
Themes
ArtistBurdensOrdinary CitizenStrugglesEmpathy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about mental health awareness, this quote can be used to highlight the different challenges faced by people in various professions.
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
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
Similar quotes
Creativity is an act of defiance.
Twyla TharpRead
I have not lost any of my crazy, fearless, raw, soulful, eclectic side and I plan on continuing to tell universal stories in an unforgettable way.
Janelle MonaeRead
The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself.
John KeatsRead
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
Gustave FlaubertRead
The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They've always been vehicles through which I can express things I have felt very, very deeply.
Anne RiceRead
I love performing outside because it's as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the stage show as well - you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It's almost as if there's a sense of invocation in performance.
Florence WelchRead