Quotes About Expression

A book without words is like love without a kiss; it's empty.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

To get his ducks in a row. Odd expression. Can you imagine how hard that would actually be? With real ducks?" "So he could make his killing." "Yes. But you let the cat out of the bag. Another odd turn of phrase. What sort of bastard would put a cat in a bag in the first place? What is it about us and animals?

William Shakespeare

My words were Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta stone; my words were wounded soldiers limping home, guns spent, from a lost battle; my words were dying fish, flipping hysterically as the net is opened and the pile spreads across the boat deck like a slippery mountain trying to become a prairie. My words were, and are, unworthy of Marianne Engel.

The most difficult thing about writing, I'm discovering, is not the act of constructing the sentences themselves. It's deciding what to put in, and where, and what to leave out. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. I chose the accident, but I could just as easily have started with any point during my thirty-five years of life before that. Why not start with: " I was born in the year 19-, in the city of -?

Talking with the mouth of a beast won't ease your pain.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

All fiction is about writing.

I was a writer, after all. Shouldn't I have a book?

He called me "darling" in that obnoxious way gay men sometimes do.

Postmodernism surely requires an even greater grasp of symbolism, as it's increasingly an art of gesture alone.

If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.

A work of art is...a bridge, however tenuous, between one mind and another.

I couldn't not write. Sometimes I ask myself, How do people get through life without writing? I write to calm anxiety, to process pain. Writing to me is reflection.

I have been a full-time fag for the past five years, I realized the other day. Everyone I know is gay, everything I do is gay, all my fantasies are gay, I am what Gus called those people we used to see in discos, bars, baths, all the time—remember? Those people we used to see EVERYWHERE, every time we went out, so that you wanted to call the police and have them arrested?

The editor will be an extension of your hand; the keys will sing as they slice their way through text and thought.

A good idea is an orphan without effective communication.

In some ways, programming is like painting. You start with a blank canvas and certain basic raw materials. You use a combination of science, art, and craft to determine what to do with them.

History had singled out the United States to play a unique role as the chief instrument for securing the advance of freedom, which found its highest expression in democratic capitalism.

It's a darn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

I always liked fashion. I like to dress up on days off - the weekend and go out - I have a friend that worked in a hat shop in Soho, and he came to me and asked me to design a logo and a hat. I did and I showed it to him and he loved it.