Quotes About Expression

Something may be a sort of fulfillment of yourself, and it may not be great to other people, but it is just as essential to yourself as if it is a great masterpiece.

I am really only myself when I'm somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination.

Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down.

A fish-trap is for catching fish; once you've caught the fish, you can forget about the trap. A rabbit-snare is for catching rabbits; once you've caught the rabbit, you can forget about the snare. Words are for catching ideas; once you've caught the idea, you can forget about the words. Where can I find a person who knows how to forget about words so that I can have a few words with them?

The dao is at the limit of the world of things. Speech and silence are not adequate to represent the idea of it. Neither speech nor silence can be the highest expression of our thinking about it.

Painting has to do with knocking yourself out day after day trying to get what you want to down on canvas. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, but every day you try. That's what painting is.

Words are the visible clothes that our invisible thoughts wear."—IKE REIGHARD

Things you say in a matter of seconds are never forgotten in a lifetime."—IKE REIGHARD

I think my type of personality has all music inside of it, so I am full of music, without even knowing it, without even learning it, without even hearing it.

The music I do is food... that will be your dinner.

I sing, and I really should've stuck with it, because it's really what I love to do. It's probably what I'm best at, too.

Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.

Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.

We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.

Words are never "only words"; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.

I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing -- I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn't really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project -- it's an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.

Charlie wanted to swear. ****, he thought, remembering how his father had told him that one reason you shouldn't swear is because then when you really need a strong word to express a strong feeling you would have none strong enough left.

The Greeks Had a Word for It.

it's poetry that's taught me everything I know. Poetry has shown me the world; I owe a debt of gratitude to poetry for the love I feel for nature, the earth, the trees, the ocean. Before I had read any poetry I resembled nothing so much as a blind woman—and a mute one, too, because I had no idea how to put my thoughts in order, no idea how to speak, the words wouldn't come. Poetry taught me how to talk.

No empañes las palabras con hipócritas silencios censuradores.

Las palabras alivian y los silencios sanan.

I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.

I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies.

Basically, there's not enough sex in movies, that's it. I'm trying to say it, people. I miss sex in movies because sex is natural, guns are not.