Quotes About Expression

I write about subectivety-and inarticulation-about life pushing you into a state where everything is melting until you're left with the absolute and you can find neither the words nor the images to express it.

In the apprehension of art there can be a loneliness, as there so often is in its creation. This breaching of loneliness may be the secret of what an audience is, or at least one of its secrets.

But this was the first occasion I had come across someone for whom art was a means of avoiding reality rather than confronting it head on, an idea so strange to me that I didn't fully comprehend it at the time.

Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.

Come out from within yourself, speak out.

Creating means living.

Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.

Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.

Great poets are great copy editors.

He did not profess to anybody how to reach others without professing.

How does one say something new and not retell?

How many unuttered words died in the heads of those for whom a word was too expensive.

My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.

Our desire to say more grows bigger and what to say about it, except that saying is not always about saying, growing is not always about growing.

Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art.

There is a moonlight note in the Moonlight Sonata; there is a thunder note in an angry sky.

Through words to the meaning of thoughts with no words.

To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.

To keep the air fresh among words is the secret of verbal cleanliness.

To write good poems is the secret of brevity.

We traveled long and forgot why poetry was invented.

Our job as writers, as we begin that journey, is to figure out what we can do. Only do what you can do. It's a rule I live by. Among other things, it means I can have novels heavier with dialogue than description. But more important, if you only do what you can do, you never have to worry that someone else is doing it. It keeps you from competing. It keeps you looking inside for what's true rather than outside for what's popular. Ideally. Your writing is your fingerprint.

Writing taught me who I was, because your writing is your fingerprint

serenading us with "Cielito Lindo." How odd, isn't that Spanish?