Patti Smith on Robert Mapplethorpe and Having a Calling as an Artist

Powerful, beautiful, wise thoughts from Patti Smith (interviewed live on Alex Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing podcast):

“Your prime directive has to be to do something new, to give something new to the canon of art, to give something new to the people, to do something great, to do something enduring, something inspiring, something that will take people somewhere they’ve never been taken. And you have to remember, you know, remember why you want to create. And so I just say, again simply: hard work and sacrifice happily—because if you can’t sacrifice with joy, then it’s meaningless. And if you sacrifice and you maintain your joy and enthusiasm and your curiosity and your ability to work hard, you’ll achieve something.”