Quotes About Expression

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done.

You have no right to be silenced.

Words go together in zillions of ways. Some ways go deep, and some ways go shallow.

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.

What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe

A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening.

I had begun to suspect, however, that there is a poet—or a kind of poet—buried in every human being like Ariel in his tree, and that the people whom we are pleased to call poets are only those who have felt the need and contrived the means to release this spirit from its prison

Her voice was weak, too much air and not enough sound.

And this must be the supreme concern of every Christian! God's honor must be expressed as He prescribes.

No one has claim to originality in literature; all writers are more or less faithful amanuenses of the spirit, translators and annotators of pre-existing archetypes.

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.

The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven't gotten there yet.

Drenched in British purples, I have offered up my tones: pigeon breast, hind belly, balky mule lung, monkey bottom pink, lapis lazuli and malachite, excited nymph thigh, panther pee-pee, high-smelling hen hair, hedgehog in aspic, barrel-maker's brothel, revered rose, monkeybush, turkey-like white, sly violet, page's slipper, immaculate nun spring, unspeakable red, Ensor azure, affected yellow, mummy skull, rock-hard gray, brunt celadon, shop soiled smoke ring.

Only when firmly grounded in a strong real self can we live and share our lives with others in ways that are healthy, straightforward expressions of our deepest needs and desires, and in so doing find fulfillment and meaning.

Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.

Much like Hemmingway. If something is easy to read, it's hard to write; if something is hard to read, it's easy to write. I want everything I write to be easy to read. I shall want every word to count. If it's described as simplistic, then I shall consider that a compliment.

Sometimes skulls are thick. Sometimes hearts are vacant. Sometimes words don't work.

What color is the wind? Blew.

A kenning is a metaphorical circumlocution consisting of paired nouns or a noun phrase. For example, in ancient Icelandic verse, a sword is not a sword but an "icicle of blood"; a ship is not a ship but the "horse of the sea"; and eyes are not eyes but the "moons of the forehead." Similarly, the earth is "the floor of the hall of the winds" or "the sea trodden on by animals," while fire is "destroyer of timber" or "the sun of houses.

Comparing your beloved to a red, red rose might be fine if you're writing a poem, but these thinkers believed more exact language was needed to express the "truth"-a term, by the way, distilled from Icelandic, Swedish, Anglo-Saxon, and other non-English words meaning "believed" rather than certain.

Jive undertakes to remedy that situation with language that makes up for the dullness of mere existence.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

I want Poetry and Power and the young men who create it.