Quotes About Expression

Do anything, but let it produce joy.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

Writing is a form attention and trains the writer's attention to find images and stories.

There are so many poetic styles and ways to write a poem. I can hardly say that I've consciously chosen a particular style, but more that I've just found myself writing and then started accumulating reasons why I was writing the way I was.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.

Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

Fiction is an Art, and, like all other Arts, that it is governed by certain laws, methods, and rules, which it is their first business to learn.

The poets speak only poetry, not program, not policy, not even advocacy, only poetry. But the poetry exists in order to make available what the ideologues are unable to see and what the policy makers are unable to grasp.

Finally, it was "to anoint the most holy [One or place]." Since this expression is never used of a person, it probably is not a reference to the Messiah or even to his church.

That's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it – just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his making.

That's what's wrong with women. They want you to wait for them until they get ready and then they don't even tell you how they feel.

Cultus as a totality belongs to the monumental creations of the human spirit. To get a proper perspective of it, we must rank it with architecture, art, poetry, and music—all of which once served religion. It is one of the great languages with which mankind speaks to the Almighty, speaking to Him for no other reason than that it must. The Almighty or "God" did not earn these names of Almighty or God only by striking fear into man and forcing him to win His good will by favors.

Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.

Anger is the fluid love bleeds when you cut it.

Form follows emotion

He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but simply by saying that they are naive.

He claimed to be an atheist, but he always used religious symbolism...