Quotes About Expression

PART ONE Dancing Queen 1977–1980

When I heard that I got so mad I kicked a closet

She accused me of being a political lesbian, not a biological one, and when I refused to give up men she got so pissed she cut my panties into little pieces and tossed them out the window

like my mother, like the ranchwomen who peopled my childhood, I would not spout ideology or argue theory. Strong women roared in silence. We roared by doing.

Writing is the voice that calls us from dreams, that peeks out of the corner of our eyes when we think no one is looking, the longing that breaks out hearts even when we think we should be happiest, and to which we cannot give a name.

I think people who are creative are the luckiest people on earth. I know that there are no shortcuts, but you must keep your faith in something Greater than You, and keep doing what you love. Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.

When we sing, we can do anything—change the world, bring peace, be our best selves at last. When we sing, our hearts can lift and fly, over the troubled waters and over the years.

In an interview after Just Roll Tape was released, Stephen (Stills) said: "There are three things men can do with women: love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature. I've had my share of success and failure at all three.

Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.

Boredom is just "What's the use?" in disguise. And "What's the use?" is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. Put three pages of it on the page.

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.

We have this idea that we need to be in the mood to write. We don't.

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written

To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar. To allow a sense of play in your relationship to accepted standards. To ask the question "Why?" To be an artist is to risk admitting that much of what is money, property, and prestige strikes you as just a little silly.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE

Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it.

There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path.

reaching toward God has made me more me and not less me. I was always afraid you would erase me. Instead, you are helping me to sketch me in.

as we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. MARTHA GRAHAM

A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. … Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind.