Quotes About Expression

Abstract design is all right—for wallpaper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity or terror, which is not abstract at all but very human.

Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of its times

There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary...because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.

Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs.

No, I hadn't made any decision; my mouth was leading its own life.

What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce—render emotional-his audience, each time.

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards

Youse guys think this deleted outfit is a blankety-blank nursery. Well, it ain't! See? —Remark attributed to a Hellenic corporal before the walls of Troy, 1194 B.C.

Science fiction means different things to different people. When I make a word do a lot of work like that, said Humpty Dumpty, I always pay it extra—in which case the term science fiction has piled up a lot of expensive overtime.

Just a man, with a face-shaped face

Everything and anything about a culture can be inferred from the shape of its language—and

If a word for a concept isn't in a language, then its culture simply doesn't have the referent the missing word would symbolize." "Oh, twaddle, Stinky! Animals fight—and ants even conduct wars. Are you trying to tell me they have to have words for it before they can do it?

A verbalizing race has words for every old concept . . . and creates new words or new definitions for old words whenever a new concept comes along. Always! A nervous system that is able to verbalize cannot avoid verbalizing; it's automatic.

You know the classification of cultures into 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian.

Man is the animal who laughs

A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

I say 'art' advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artists.

She found as always that words on paper proved themselves; they were so beautifully true.

Support for the arts—merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body.

Don't grunt; it is not pleasing in a young woman.

government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

His expression was innocent, his eyes were not. What sort of creature had a face like that?