Quotes About Expression

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.

We might say that both the artist and the neurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an external, active work project

The artist takes in the world, but instead of being oppressed by it, he reworks it in his own personality and recreates it in the work of art.

What is one's true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation? In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself?

in order for this power to truly captivate us, it has to be generated in the creation of meaning and in social performance

Some are more fortunately endowed to set the implicit tone for the performance because they present a model self. The less fortunate are obliged to dance a lifetime to the performance cues of others.

declared Mr Marrable magniloquently;

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.

Relativism does entail nihilism: if standards are inherently and inescapably expressions of something called culture, and can be nothing else, then no culture can be subjected to a standard, because (ex hypothesi) there cannot be a trans-cultural standard which would stand in judgement over it. No argument could be simpler or more conclusive.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

Good writing is good conversation, only more so.

If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.

I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.

I love you and I always will and I am sorry. What a useless word.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.