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 don't believe people playing rock n' roll should have crowns. We're not kings and queens. Anybody can play it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Patti Smith emphasizes the accessibility of rock n' roll, rejecting notions of elitism associated with royalty.
In this quote, Patti Smith expresses her belief that rock n' roll is a genre that should be open to everyone, rather than being reserved for a select few who are deemed 'royalty' in the music industry. She challenges the idea of status and hierarchy within the music world, suggesting that the true spirit of rock n' roll lies in its communal and participatory nature, where anyone can create and enjoy the music.
Themes
Rock N RollMusicAccessibilityParticipationEgalitarian
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of inclusivity in the arts.
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
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