Quotes About Expression

Let us not look for the soul of Russia in the Russian novel: let us look for the individual genius. Look at the masterpiece, and not at the frame—and not at the faces of other people looking at the frame.

the artist in me has been given the upper hand over the gentleman.

My habit of being silent when displeased, or, more exactly, the cold and scaly quality of my displeased silence, used to frighten Valeria out of her wits. She used to whimper and wail, saying 'Ce qui me rend folle, c'est que je ne sais à quoi tu penses quand tu es comme ça.' I tried being silent with Charlotte – and she just chirped on, or chucked my silence under the chin. An astonishing woman!

for she soars with the wildest hyperbole when not tagging after the most pedestrian dictum.

You are an artist,' I said -- to say something.

I simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink, that raw rose about the lips, those wet, matted eyelashes…

Now the colored pencils in more detail.

but as there is in the world not a single human who can speak my language;

Tenho de reproduzir o impacto aquela visão instantânea por meio de uma sequência de palavras, mas seu acúmulo físico na página faz com que se perca a nitidez da percepção global. p. 112

I have lived an agonizing life, and I would like to describe that agony to you--but I am obsessed by the fear that there will not be time enough.

We must thank fate (and the author's thirst for universal fame) for his not having turned to the Ukrainian dialect as a medium of expression, because then he would have been lost. When I want a good nightmare I imagine Gogol penning in Little Russian dialect volume after volume of Dikanka and Mirgorod stuff about ghosts haunting the banks of the Dniepr, burlesque Jews and dashing Cossacks.

And I have toyed with many pseudonyms for myself before I hit on a particularly apt one. There are in my notes "Otto Otto" and "Mesmer Mesmer" and "Lambert Lambert," but for some reason I think my choice expresses the nastiness best.

Aquello que se escribió con esfuerzo se lee con facilidad

Literature under despotism: "The personality of the artist should develop freely and without restraint. One thing, however, we demand: acknowledgement of our creed." - Dr. Rosenberg, Minister of Culture – Third Reich "Every artist has the right to create freely; but we, Communists, must guide him according to plan." - Lenin pg. 7

do not know why I was so tormented by your betrayals, rather I myself know why, but I do not know the words I must choose to make you understand why I was so tormented. Such words do not come in the small size that fits your everyday needs.

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses

Oh, to shout it so that all of you believe me at last, you cruel, smug people...

I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses

Želim da ustanem, da raširim ruke za beskrajni zagrljaj, da se velikim, blistavim re?ima obratim nevidljivoj publici. Po?eo bih ovako: – O bogovi duginih boja...

I know something. I know something. But expression of it comes so hard !

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself- in defiance of all the world's muteness.

Not knowing how to write, but sensing with my criminal intuition how words are combined, what one must do for a commonplace word to come alive and to share its neighbor's sheen, heat, shadow, while reflecting itself in its neighbor and renewing the neighboring word in the process, so that the whole line is live iridescence…

I do not know the words I must choose to make you understand why I was so tormented. Such words do not come in the small size that fits your everyday needs.

You who conceal your strongest feelings must think me a shameless little idiot for throwing open my poor bruised heart like this.