Quotes About Expression

You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly. You can't write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

Das mine!' protested Ava, Bennie's daughter, affirming Alex's recent theory that language acquisition involved a phase of speaking German. She snatched a plastic skillet away from his own daughter, Cara-Ann, who lurched after it, roaring, 'Mine pot! Mine pot!

A smile is a door that is both open and closed.

At the beginning he'd thought of his style as being his essence, the perfect expression of who he was inside, but lately the styles had started to feel like disguises, distractions Danny could move around behind without being seen. 27

You know the expression," Eddie said. " 'Don't write if you can talk, and don't talk if you can nod.' " Styles was delighted. "A mick said that." Eddie winked.

We work in the realm of the impression." Nell hailed a taxi and directed the driver to East

Time's a goon right? Isn't that the expression?

Bennie has light brown skin and excellent eyes, and he irons his hair in a Mohawk as shiny black as a virgin record.

Well, I'm the guy talking. Someone's always doing the talking, just a lot of times you don't know who it is or what their reasons are.

His eyes weren't closed like they used to be when he'd make Danny tell about an ice castle on Pluto where a band of pirates lived. But wanting to be told a story, entertained, however that looks on a person's face--Danny saw this now and remembered it. It filled him with relief.

I save up those words and later on I open up the notebook where I'm keeping the journal Holly told us all to keep and I write them down one by one. And for some reason that puts me in a good mood, like money in the bank.

But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was precision, perfection; the problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared through its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead.

He thought: I'm a guy who wears boots like this. It was the first thing he knew about himself.

Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don't believe there's a poem in anything anymore, maybe I'll write a story. A lot of people do that when they can't seem to figure out who or what they love. It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know.

eyebrows have never inflicted a moment of pain on me.

You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

Even smiling, there's no hope for Marty's face. But I'm worried he might think the same of me, so I don't smile back.

I want words that are still alive, that have a pulse. Hot words, people! Give me the bullet, not the casing — fire it right in my chest. I'll die gladly for some fresh language.

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

As it turns out, we're all still learning to be men, or women, all still learning to be ourselves. pg 197

Anybody can buy. It takes an artist to shop.

The more we feel compelled to keep explaining ourselves, the less like others we become.

And now, I still really don't care that much but now I have music playing all the time at home, which is a first for me. Whatever. Everything from Ani DiFranco to Dave Matthews to Jack Johnson and Norah Jones.

He talks the way sprinters run and dancers dance, an elite athlete. He talks as though he was born to talk. At