Quotes About Expression

If I were going to prom again, I would wear a huge skirt and plain cotton tank. A big, poofy, flotation-device-sized skirt. I wish I had done that.

You shouldn't have to be a chair at a think tank to speak your mind.

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.

A method involving apparent obscurity is surely justified when it is the clearest, the simplest, the only method possible of saying in full what the writer has to say

Contact with a small baby can conjure at least an echo of that feeling in those who are not obscured by an uprush of maternity to the brain. Of course it is not really so cut-and-dried as all this; but often the only way of attempting to express the truth is to build it up, like a card-house, of a pack of lies.

When you write a poem these relations must reverse themselves. That is, the relation of the words to the subject must weaken and the relation of the words to the writer (you) must take on strength.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

In truth, the writer's problems are usually psychological, like everyone else's.

Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it, a wise man once told me.

Self-acceptance through writing is no different than self-acceptance through time.

The expression "pragmatism" is like an accordion; it is sometimes stretched to include a wide diversity of positions and thinkers (not just philosophers) and sometimes restricted to specific doctrines of the original American pragmatists.

First, babies are very expressive emotionally, giggling or crying or recoiling in terror or disgust so strongly that you have no doubt what they're feeling. Also, babies are blissfully ignorant of social constraints. An adult might try to stifle a guffaw if he thinks the humor in a video clip is sophomoric (albeit hilarious) and censor a disgusted grimace if he thinks showing disgust is unmanly. Babies wear their emotions on their sleeves.

People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.

Can you imagine a silence so desperate to be heard?

Sometimes it seems that all our words, even those for love, are written in another language. And yet they still arrive, distant, full of their own silences which may be what allows us to invent another story, what saves us. What is the word for the kind of love the woman shows now? A word that contains the whole story the way her lamp contains her room, — Richard Jackson, from "The Whole Story," Resonance: Poems (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)

How seldom we can see our way to say what we love. — Richard Jackson, from "Elegy Along a Line of Sight," The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems (Press 53, 2022)

I always look for a woman who has a tattoo. I see a woman with a tattoo, and I'm thinking, okay, here's a gal who's capable of making a decision she'll regret in the future.

A gun is like love. The universal language.

Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it out loud enough and it becomes a wall you can't get through.

My back feels like someone beat me with a pillowcase full of tuna-fish cans.

I prefer Abomination. It fits better on a T-shirt. I'd comp you one, but we don't have any big enough for your ego.

You're morbid tonight," said Largo. "I'm morbid every night. I just don't always get the chance to share it with others.

Home late. Be naked.