Quotes About Expression

I wish you'd read your poems," she said sternly. "We need poems to heal." "I'm not ready to heal," I said as gently as I could because I was afraid how she'd respond. She nodded. "I respect that," she said, and walked away.

Helen made you think like the world would end without your art.

Shame squats over my face and sits.

Sometimes you need to explain your experiences in order to understand them yourself.

I don't think, therefore I am—I hurt, therefore I am. Therefore, my books are graded on a pain scale. If it's 2, maybe it's not worth telling my story. If it's 10, maybe my book will be a bestseller.

In Pryor, I saw someone channel what I call minor feelings: the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one's perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.

The problem with silence is that it can't speak up and say why it's silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on a life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance,

Early on, my father learned that in America, one must be emotionally demonstrative to succeed, so he has a habit of saying "I love you" indiscriminately, to his daughters, to his employees, to his customers, and to airline personnel

The Korean girls I knew were so moody they made Sylvia Plath seem as dull as C-SPAN.

She talked about how the circuits of a poetic form are not charged on what you say, but what you hold back. The poem is a net that catches the stutters, the hesitations, rather

Myung Mi Kim was the first poet who said I didn't need to sound like a white poet nor did I have to "translate" my experiences so that they sounded accessible to a white audience. No other mentor afterwards was as emphatic about this idea as her.

Acting allows me the freedom to let go, to be in the moment, to be spontaneous. I no longer have the fear of losing, of failure.

This, she thought, was what love and desperation made you do: say things that were better left unsaid, give yourself away in a million little gestures, a thousand little changes of expression.

I hate when instruction books, blogs or well-meaning friends tell you "just get over it!" or "just write!"   Like that didn't occur to you. Like all it would take is someone pointing out that say, you should just stop doing that thing you've been doing all your life.   "You mean I should just sit down and write? My God, that's brilliant! Why have I not thought of this before? Thank you, oh sage guru!

It sounds like 'twee', but it's spelled T-H-U-Y.

Close-minded idiot. And like so many close-minded people, she can't seem to be close-mouthed along with it.

The words of the Greeks are born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.

Hard to say the right thing, these days.

Other ayatollahs considered the female voice arousing and barred women from speaking in mixed gatherings unless they first put a stone in their mouths to distort the sound. Khomeini,

Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.

It wasn't a good idea to speak without putting a deal of thought into it. Words could be snares. Less of them you laid out there, less likely they could trap you up.

Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you.

He wanted to get down his reactions to that painting, exactly what he'd noticed and his response to it. You never get a second chance to have a first impression.

No, no," he said. "She can't raise it at all. She may only clap. Women must be very careful of their voices. If