Quotes About Expression

Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters.

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are... The good writers touch life often.

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? The show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, pore less, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth.

I'm seventeen and I'm crazy.

Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper. — Ray Bradbury

For only after, can one nail down, examine, explain. To try to know beforehand is to freeze and kill. Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all Creation.

Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating.

I do not use my intellect to write my stories and books; I have a gut reaction to the things that my subconscious gives me.

It is a wise writer who knows his own subconcious. And not only knows it but lets it speak of the world as it and it alone has sensed it and shaped it to its own truth.

This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are.

Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.

Writing is not a serious business. It's a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it. Ignore the authors who say 'Oh, my God, what word? Oh, Jesus Christ…', you know. Now, to hell with that. It's not work. If it's work, stop and do something else.

Business or profession?' 'I guess you'd call me a writer.' No profession,' said the police car, as if talking to itself. The light held him fixed, like a museum specimen, needle thrust through chest.

The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.

when a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry.

The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers.

We theorize about what goes on in the brain, but it is mostly undiscovered country. A writer's work is to coax the stuff out and see how it plays. Surprise, as I have often said, is everything.

We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.

Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words.

We might start off by paraphrasing Oscar Wilde's poem, substituting the word 'Art' for 'Love'. Art will fly if held too lightly, Art will die if held too tightly, Lightly, tightly, how do I know Whether I'm holding or letting Art go?

Second, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that.

Se dan cuenta, ahora, de por qué los libros son odiados y temidos? Muestran los poros del rostro de la vida. La gente comodona sólo desea caras de luna llena, sin poros, sin pelo, inexpresivas. Vivimos en una época en que las flores tratan de vivir de flores, en lugar de crecer gracias a la lluvia y al negro estiércol.