Quotes About Expression

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity.

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.

We youths say "like" all the time because we mistrust reality.

We youths say "like" all the time because we mistrust reality. It takes a certain commitment to say something is. Inserting "like" gives you a bit more running room.

I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling—it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful.

I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must remember that

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

Give yourself permission to be bad. Write first, polish later.

Good writers are good readers.

By the early twentieth century, autobiography was fast establishing itself as a major form of imaginative writing

Light bulbs up the ass, no big deal!" you say. "On a good night I can fit a Butterball and two sweet potatoes up my bum!" Aye--But here's the rub: How did these bulbs come to shine so brightly? They weren't plugged into an electrical socket... An hour before her performance, Ida lay spread-eagle on the ground, and she had a helping hand (and how) slowly, carefully, millimeter by millimeter--INSERT A BATTERY PACK INTO HER UPPER INTESTINE.

If letters had eyebrows, these would be arched.

As sung by Schipa, 'Che farò senza Euridice' is indeed the grief-stricken piece that Gluck intended. The true measure of its success lies in the word-note-tone relationship, where the art and idiom of the singer is added to the art of the composer in order to ensure the effective portrayal of human emotion.

Well, I think one of the main things that you have to think about when acting in the movies is to try not to make the acting show.

They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech.

He knew, with unwavering certainty, that just like organic beings, artificial ones had the same capacity to bring goodness into the universe, as much as they could do the opposite. The nature of a sentient being's origin did not matter. It was the expression of that life that created light or darkness.

Life is sad enough without people writing sad books.

His face was a gaze of primal obtuseness.

When people start talking about enjambment and line endings, I always shut them up. This is not something to talk about, this is a private matter, it's up to the poet.