Quotes About Expression

I want to give you something, or I want to take something from you. But I want to feel the exchange, the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out and the ear holding onto it.

Poetry is a place where both grief and grace can live, where rage can be explored and examined, not simply exploited.

It's been a long time since I've wanted to die, it makes me feel like taking off my skin suit and seeing how my light flies all on its own, neon and bouncy like a wannabe star.

People love to make big pronouncements about poetry saving us. And I want to believe that, but for now, what I can say is … poetry can make us feel. And right now, maybe that's enough. It doesn't have to bring us hope or joy, it just has to remind us that we feel. That we are alive, and here, and feeling the world.

making music like resurrection or haunting or just plain need.

A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination.

Having something to say is overrated.

Write it down. Whatever it is, write it down. Chip in into marble. Type it into Microsoft Word. Spell it out in seaweeds on the shore. We are each of us an endangered species, delicate as unicorns.

Whenever people say they hate to say something, they actually love to say it.

Updike "describes to no purpose.

She emoted more by blinking than I did in the entirety of my sixth-grade class play

I like the freedom of podcasting. With podcasting you can really mess around with the form and the format. You can do as much time as you like without having to pause for commercials.

From an early age I didn't buy into the value systems of working hard in a nine-to-five job. I thought creativity, friendship and loyalty and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable was much more interesting.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

When you see a Gauguin, you think, This man is living in a dream world. When you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man.

Love, like light, is a thing that is enacted better than defined: we know it afterward by the traces it leaves on paper.

Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they're arguing.

Writers are married to their keyboards, as to their passports.

Writing well isn't just a question of winsome expression, but of having found something big and true to say and having found the right words to say it in, of having seen something large and having found the right words to say it small, small enough to enter an individual mind so that the strong ideas of what the words are saying sound like sweet reason.

we swim in our second language, we breathe in our first

Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.

Originality is what everybody wants, but there's a sweet spot," Rob Minkoff explains. "If it's not original enough, it's boring or trite. If it's too original, it may be hard for the audience to understand. The goal is to push the envelope, not tear the envelope.

Don't criticize yourself while you're creating.

Kind of gay? I wanted to say. Do you have any notion how many homosexuals sweated their ass off on the dance floor to make this soaring bit of derivative trash possible? How many died of AIDS, OD'd, or went broke on the way to that girl from Texas cutting a deal...