Quotes About Expression

It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or a woman pure and simple.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.

We are the words; we are the music...

Boys in uniform, carrying guns, marched with their eyes ahead of them, marched, their arms stiff, and on their faces an expression like the letters of a legend written round the base of a statue praising duty, gratitude, fidelity, love of England.

I prefer, where truth is important, to write fiction.

Y es que las obras maestras no son logros aislados y solitarios; son el resultado de muchos años de pensamiento en común, del pensamiento colectivo de muchas personas, de tal suerte que, tras esa voz individual, se encuentra la experiencia de la masa (p. 89).

Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

I have written this book quicker than any other," she notes in her diary, "[and] it is all a joke; & yet gay & quick reading I think; a writers holiday. I feel more and more sure that I will never write a novel again

There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; & that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.' (26 July 1922)

They are very large in effect, these painters; very little self-conscious; they have smooth broad spaces in their minds where I am all prickles & promontories.

this diminished the entire joy, the pure joy, of the two notes sounding together, and let the sound die on her ear now with a dismal flatness.

We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light.

And are you in love? And are you happy? And do you sometimes write a poem? And have you had your hair cut? And have you met anybody of such beauty your eyes dance, as the waves danced

Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.

But Lord! once one began mouthing words aloud, how silly they sounded!

beauty glowing, suddenly expressive, withdrawn the moment after. No one can count on it or seize it or have it wrapped in paper. Nothing is to be won from the shops, and Heaven knows it would be better to sit at home than haunt the plate-glass windows in the hope of lifting the shining green, the glowing ruby, out of them alive.

Y mientras gesticulas, con tu capa, tu bastón, intento exponer ante ti un secreto que nadie conoce: estoy pidiéndote (en pie detrás de ti) que tomes mi vida entre tus manos y me digas si estoy condenado a inspirar repulsión en aquellos a quienes amo.

It is so vast an alleviation to be able to point for another to look at. And then not to talk. To follow the dark paths of the mind and enter the past, to visit books, to brush aside their branches and break off some fruit.

What she said in To the Lighthouse of Lily Briscoe's art she might have said of her own: that the pen was 'the one dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos . . .',73 and the godlike power she felt as a writer is perfectly embodied in a passage from that novel.

Whatever sentence I extract whole and entire from this cauldron is only a string of six little fish that let themselves be caught while a million others leap and sizzle, making the cauldron bubble like boiling silver, and slip through my fingers.

After all, she may have thought, do words say everything? Can words say anything? Do not words destroy the symbol that lies beyond the reach of words?

Ainda assim não conseguiu dizer nada; o horizonte inteiro parecia despido de qualquer possível objeto de comentário.