Quotes About Expression

I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.

Call things by their right names - Glass of brandy and water! That is the current, but not the appropriate name; ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.

I used to make up names when I used to catalog my stuff.

What's really fun is to write under different names.

I make up names for people all the time - it's part of writing. Very often, the name comes with the character, along with of a sense of who they are and what they do.

If we're really writing, we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate.

Genres are just names.

It's not about the names or the faces: it's about the music we are creating.

I had a list of names I wanted to use. Ricochet happened to be one of them, but I really wanted a true name name, like Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole, John Cena.

I don't want to single anyone out. I'll just say that there are a lot of not good band names out there.

You know, I think sometimes certain players - and I don't name names - but certain players have a certain haircut, they have certain sack celebrations. They draw a lot of attention to themselves.

The thing about music is that it gives voice and names to anguish and also addresses how to comfort it.

Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.

Lots of narcissistic people have helped lots of other people with their music. That's such a narcissistic thing to say! Ha ha!

Writing your memoir is inherently narcissistic.

Compared to other people, I am not that narcissistic. Sometimes, I don't even plan all that I wear.

In the 1960s, songs were an integral part of film narration. I have been fortunate to have had some of the best songs of the era picturised on me, some of which gave me an opportunity to use my skills as a dancer too.

The gender is irrelevant; the identity is the one you should try and create for yourself by yourself, and the narrative of your own life becomes your own book.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.

Roles don't fascinate me. It is the narrative, the screenplay that is fascinating.

Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.

I used my instincts. It's very easy to imagine how you'd feel, actually. I just had to tell the narrative.

I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can't and shouldn't be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering.

Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'