Creativity Quote by Patti LuPone

The line lands like a slammed stage door: curt, almost offended that anyone would mistake craft for constant availability. Patti LuPone isn’t just rejecting “show business” as an industry; she’s rejecting the expectation that performers should be permanently on, permanently grateful, permanently consumable. The phrasing is doing the work. “We’re not show-business people” draws a bright line between artists and the carnival side of entertainment: PR smiles, brand maintenance, networked glad-handing. Then the kicker, “We have a life,” is both mundane and radical in a culture that treats celebrity as a full-time personality.

LuPone’s intent reads as protective and insurgent. She’s defending a boundary in a field that punishes boundaries, especially for women who are expected to be personable, pliable, and endlessly game. It’s also a flex: only someone with real leverage gets to say no out loud. That’s part of the pleasure of the quote. It’s not therapy-speak; it’s an old-school, New York blunt instrument.

The subtext is about labor. “Show business” implies the unpaid work around the work: parties, schmoozing, press, the soft obligations that turn an artist into a product. LuPone reframes that as optional, even beneath her. Contextually, it fits her long-standing persona as a performer who respects the stage and mistrusts the machinery around it. The result is an anti-glamour mantra: the performance is the job, not the lifestyle.