Quotes About Expression

As a consequence, the United States is a safe place for those who want to criticize the government but a dangerous place for those who want to advance unpopular thoughts about any other subject that could be deemed insulting or discomfiting.

Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who's exactly like yourself in every possible way, only to realize that this stranger is as boring as shit.

Such language, Babette says. Why don't you just take a dump in my ears!

The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!

We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.

Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way.

Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history's in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.

What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.

Pretty much always. We need to tell the story of our life to someone.

This is passive-aggression in action.

Just for the record, being smeared with shit and naked in the wilderness, spattered with pink vomit, this does not necessarily make you a real artist.

If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

I want to have your abortion.

I want you to invent it. I want you to have that skill. To create your own reality. Your own set of laws. I want to try and teach you that.

The photographer in my head says: Give me peace. Flash. Give me release. Flash.

You'll need to suffer to make any real art.

Just for the record, waking up on drugs with your pubic hair shaved and something plastic stuck in your vagina doesn't necessarily make you a real artist.

It's okay to cry as long as you're faking it.

You can say anything if enough people will listen.

She'd wear shades of lipstick you'd expect to see around the base of a penis.