Quotes About Expression

I don't plot or outline, though I may take a few notes here and there, instead I let my dream world fill up each night with a segment of the story. I do this without worrying about it, or trying to force it, and when I wake up the dream bag is full, and I can go to my writing desk, and dream all over the page.

Si el amor se alimenta de música, seguid tocando (Shakepeare)

Dream! Forge yourself and rise Out of your mind and into others. Men, be women. Fish, be flies. Girls, take beards. Sons, be your mothers. The future of the world now lies In coral wombs behind our eyes.

I begin. I write a draft without ever looking back. Without ever touching what's gone before. Because I think it will be shit, so I daren't look back. I write a draft. I start again. I have the text when I start the second draft and then I do the same thing a third time. - To Linda L. Richards, The January Interview

Here let me be quite clear: the primary impulse behind such creations is not escapism. That implies a kind of cowardice in the face of the world, which is not what inspires such visions. Quite the reverse. It is a hunger to see more clearly that fuels the true fantasist. A desire to express the world's transforming heart.

He'd never seen such a look on any human face: such a wilderness of innocent malice. A

This idea stayed with me for several years before I found an adequate way to express it. I called the sea Quiddity, and slowly developed a mythology around it. Human beings would enter Quiddity, the dream-sea, three times, I decided. Once when they were born, once when they slept beside the person they would love most in their lives, and once before they died. Three life-changing immersions in the sea of the unconscious. Three confrontations with the secret show of our dreams.

He offered her a grin designed for better teeth.

What matters is there's something in you which is unique to you. And that's the only thing that matters. Not being the next Clive Barker, not being the next… whatever. What matters is being the next whoever you are. The only whoever you are. And - right or wrong - I'm the only Clive Barker.

Books are like people, when they are open they are red

I wonder if the reverse is not also in some way true. That the artist is constantly working on an elaborate and fantasticated self-portrait, but at the end has drawn, unbeknown, a picture of the world.

So you can't please all the people all the time. All you can do is what pleases you, and hope that it pleases other people. I love my readers, and I respect my readers, but I'm not going to simplify or echo myself, copy myself, just so the sales will be better.

There were traces of wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, but they seemed to have been smoothed out surgically. For what Jenner charged for his deprogramming services, he could afford the best plastic surgeons in the world, but his face had that startled, deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression so common with inferior cosmetic work. It was an incongruity of little importance, but Max was still surprised

That's what tears are for, after all. A way for the soul to bleed. Pg. 109

One of the gifts of a long marriage is the ability to communicate anything—from mild displeasure to the meaning of life—with a single glance. It's something you develop in the process of mixing your soul with your spouse's, if you're willing to mix your soul.

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ( Casual Chance , 1964)

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it...

If I examine a painting through a microscope I shall learn about the texture of the paint, but nothing about the artists intention in painting the picture

I never write purely for the fun of it. I write as a mathematician uses a sheet of paper for doing calculations: because I think better that way

Weeks passed, but my Word-A-Day Calendar was stuck on motherfucker.

Take it out on each other if you cannot take it out on the ones who deserve it.

You have to have an inside you, she used to say, and an outside you. Ain't nobody's business who you are really, so it's up to you what you gave them.

The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits ("Where Eagles Dare [fast version]," "Horror Business," "Hybrid Moments") and Blanck Mass ("Dead Format"). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth.