Quotes About Expression

I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

I am proud to be an emotionalist.

To discover the mode of life or of art whereby my spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom.

To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art.

I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day, said Joyce. Does that mean that you have written a great deal? I said. Two sentences, said Joyce. I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. You've been seeking the mot juste? I said. No, said Joyce. I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.

Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?

A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.

The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. NON SERVIAM!

I'll tickle his catastrophe.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: — That is God. Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! — What? Mr Deasy asked. — A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

Shite and onions!

But Noodynaady's actual ingrate tootle is of come into the garner mauve and thy nice are stores of morning and buy me a bunch of iodines.

Bite my laughters, drink my tears. Pore into me, volumes, spell me stark and spill me swooning, I just don't care what my thwarters think.

I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description

Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.

You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence, exile, and cunning.

The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.

Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed...

Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use?silence, exile, and cunning.

Oh rocks!' says Molly Bloom, drumming her fingers in impatience. 'Tell us in plain words.