Artists who whine because they need a grant and the government doesn't help them—well, tough shit. I had the same problem. I worked in a bookstore for seven years to make money to buy art supplies. And that was fine. I don't think artists should ever expect anything from anybody. For the artist, sacrifice and hardship are a part of the process.

About Patti Smith

Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, and author. Her 1975 debut album, Horses, established her as an influential member of the New York City–based punk rock movement, earning the nicknames "Queen of Punk" and "Godmother of Punk". Smith has fused rock and poetry...

More quotations from Patti Smith

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

—Patti Smith

People have the power to redeem the work of fools.

—Patti Smith

power people work fools

More quotations tagged with “sacrifice”

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

—W. Somerset Maugham

sacrifice principles speed expediency

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

—Max Beerbohm

work doubt sacrifice concentration toil self-sacrifice

However fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody, or even most people, thinks and lives fashionably; virtue and honor will not be banished from the world, however many popular moralists and panicky journalists say so. Sacrifice will not cease to be because psychiatrists have popularized the idea that there is often some concealed self-serving element in it; theologians always knew that. Nor do I think love as a high condition of honor will be lost; it is a pattern in the spirit, and people long to make the pattern a reality in their own lives, whatever means they take to do so.

—Robertson Davies

love virtue future knowledge world popularity despair sacrifice present journalism honor

Let others laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.

—Theodore Parker

laughter time sacrifice eternity desire duty

Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you.

—Karl Lagerfeld

self-worth sacrifice

History

23 Nov 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Artists who whine because they need a grant and the government doesn't help them — well, tough shit. I had the same problem. I worked in a bookstore for seven years to make money to buy art supplies. And that was fine. I don't think artists should ever expect anything from anybody. For the artist, sacrifice and hardship are a part of the process.