Quotes About Expression

I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.

The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.

I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

Stand up for the Crazy and Stupid

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.

A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots.

I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

The words of my book are nothing, the drift of it everything.

The poet is individual—he is complete in himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not.

he cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; And your very flesh shall be a great poem…

The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes one.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words; In the best poems reappears the body, man's or woman's, well-shaped,         natural, gay;

The greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals... he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, with the twirl of my tongue I encompass words and volumes of words

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, Scattering it freely forever.

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn

And your very flesh shall be a great poem