Quotes About Expression

Jack met Kwan's eyes, glanced away, then looked back. Jack nodded once, kind of like saying hi, but Kwan did not respond. His lean face was all planes and angles, and as warm as a granite mask. He also had a split lip and a heavy purple bruise on his cheek from the guards. Jack

I didn't know what to say that wouldn't sound self

The clerk was a thin guy in his early twenties with limp hair and a spray of zits on his chin. His eyes were lifeless and dull, like a daydreaming cow.

She gave me the serious goldfish face, then went back to staring at her dress.

The girl came out of the kitchen with the pot. She looked confused as she held up the pot, her expression saying what in hell is this? Pike raised a finger, telling her to wait, then checked his watch. It was now thirteen minutes before eight.

Suppressing legitimate anger is unhealthy. Continually venting anger is also unhealthy.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, grace metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, Why don't you say what you mean? We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.

All the fun's in how you say a thing.

My definition of literature would be just this: words that have become deeds.

The ear is the only writer and the only true reader.

I could say Elves to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. –

I won't have it, in poetry, that bulk counts. People say to me, 'Now settle down and do a long work, since you have shown the public that you can produce beautiful short poetry.' And their implication tells me that making two verses or a short poem does not satisfy their concept of what an accomplished poet should be able to do. Bulk they want, as evidence of a man's power.

Spare me the setting of my fate to music.

I'm glad of any political freedom they give me, but what I'm interested in is not political freedom. I'm interested in the liberties I take.