Quotes About Expression

We shape the telling to fit the substance, rework the substance to support the design.

Ninety percent of all verbal expression has no filmic equivalent. "He's been sitting there for a long time" can't be photographed.

Story Event creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and ACHIEVED THROUGH CONFLICT.

When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.

The archetypal story unearths a universally human experience, then wraps itself inside a unique, culture-specific expression. A stereotypical story reverses this pattern:

Porque los artistas no deben tener sólo ideas que expresar, sino ideas que demostrar. Expresar una idea, en el sentido de presentarla, nunca es suficiente. El público no debe únicamente entender; debe creer.

Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.

When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.

Viva the mitten with wriggle room over the glove where form follows function!

Viva ambiguity acknowledged unambiguously!

Something feels like it's missing when I haven't heard any music, and when I hear music, then I really feel like something is missing. That's the best I can do in trying to describe music.

Wherever poesie can be felt, all poetic touches are superfluous.

I'm not here to write, I'm here to be mad.

Mir fehlt etwas, wenn ich keine Musik höre, und wenn ich Musik höre, fehlt mir erst recht etwas. Dies ist das Beste, was ich über Musik zu sagen weiß.

Las naturalezas creativas no son especulativas. Eso las distingue de los imitadores.

Every book that has been printed is, after all, a grave for its author, isn't it?

I already said loud and clear that today I'm apparently a little hmm hmm and la-di-da and okay a bit hoo-hoo and maybe also a little wee-oo wee-oo. Is that so terrible?

If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

The gift that isn't big enough to make a mark, but is too big to leave the possessor in peace. And so they can't be content to be Sunday painters, or poets who write for a few friends, or composers whose handful of delicate little settings of Emily Dickinson can't find a singer. It's a special sort of hell.

Be not another if thou canst be thyself.