Quotes About Expression

Some people, were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people, dance.

Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

I don't know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they've always reflected it in their art. End of story.

But the fact is, she [the muse] won't be summoned. She alights when it damn well pleases her. She falls in love with one artist, then deserts him for another. She's a real bitch!

Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.

And it all comes out so lame. I love your mouth. I love your hair. I love your ears. I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.

Did I want to dance? Of course I did and that's not all.

That's what a writer is -- a conqueror of fears.

Uno no tiene por qué pedir disculpas si quiere ser el dueño de su propia alma... para bien o para mal. Cuando ya todo se ha dicho y hecho, es todo cuanto queda.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.

Blush like you mean it

You want to be a poet and not die.

I was glowing with health and well-being, as a woman will glow when she's been fucked four times in one day by two different men

We have let Eros mean slavery, but Eros also has the power to set us free. We must demand the right to depict women's lives as we know them, not as we might like them to be. We must stop applying political prescriptions to creativity.

But I am wise if not yet quite old, wanting the poem more than the lover, wanting words more than the sticky dew men secrete in their private places.

It's impossible to generalize about sexuality - even one's own. The only way to keep it pure is to keep it unspoken. Keep it out of words. Words are not where sexuality lives. Without privacy, there is no ecstasy.

If I loved him, would I censor my writing to please him? If I married him, would I force my writing to be married as well?

Every woman artist has to kill her own grandmother. She perches on our shoulder whispering, Don't embarrass the family.

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.

if sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body - and with it your own voice - and that's the most revolutionary insight of all