Quotes About Expression

Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.

If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.

The truth is, I didn't think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line and I wasn't doing that.

It is translation, more than speech itself, which provides incontrovertible evidence of the human capacity to think and to communicate thought. We should do more of it.

I express not the word for the word but the sense for the sense.

Would we have ever asked what it is that a translator 'carries across' the 'language barrier' if he or she were called a 'turner', 'tongue-man', or 'exchanger'? Probably not.

The expression "literal meaning," taken literally, is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, and a nonsense.

In many circumstances, formal education replaces the infant language with one that goes on to be used in adult life as the operative means of communication.

This way of dealing with an untranslatable by not translating it while making it pronounceable (sound translation, homophonic translation: see here) could be considered the primary, original meaning of the term literal translation.

speech is such an ephemeral thing - it's gone in a puff of warm air, which is all it is in a material sense

Translation is meaning.

Once again, the expression uttered (in speech or writing) is not the sole or even the primary object of translation when the force of an utterance is what matters, as it always does.

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

Writing is no answer but when you feel deeply there is little else to do.

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.

I love America more than any other country in this world; and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid the state of being alone.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

Joy and peace are manifestations of the presence of God, and your brother and sister are His perfect expression. You now understand that there is no need to alter perfection.

I've spoken the truth. The truth can't be unsaid.

In a way song writing can almost be detrimental, because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don't need to have direct communication. You can say, 'I can't describe it to you, but I will record it and send it to you.'

At the moment, everyone gets a copyright as soon as the work is written down or otherwise fixed, whether they want one or not.

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills and as immortal.

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.