Creativity Quote by Kate Smith

Kate Smith frames performance less as display than as a feedback loop: a singer sends something out, then waits for the room to answer. The key word is "sometimes". It’s a small admission that punctures any fantasy of the performer as a nonstop conduit of magic. Connection isn’t guaranteed; it’s earned, unpredictable, and therefore precious. By naming it "wonderful sympathy", she leans into an older sense of sympathy as shared feeling, not pity - a kind of emotional alignment where singer and audience briefly occupy the same inner weather.

The subtext is quietly pragmatic: the audience isn’t a faceless mass to be conquered, it’s an instrument to be tuned. Smith’s "telling me I've reached their hearts" suggests she’s listening for signs - the hush, the collective breath, the timing of applause - as evidence of real contact. This is show business, but it’s also a moral economy: she offers sincerity and craft, and the crowd repays her with recognition that what she’s doing matters to them.

"And when I do, the thrill is mine" is a neat reversal of who the beneficiary is supposed to be. Audiences like to imagine the performer exists for their catharsis; Smith claims the private prize. In the context of her era - a radio and wartime voice built on steadiness and reassurance - it reads as an artist protecting a sliver of personal exhilaration inside a public role. The line respects the crowd, but it also draws a boundary: she can move you, and still keep the thrill as her own.