Quotes About Expression

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

If I get busted in New York, the freest city in the world, that will be the end of my career.

Take away the right to say "f**" and you take away the right to say "f** the government."

The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour -- ha ha ha ha ha -- they'll take you away, man. You can't.

There are never enough 'I love yous'.

There are no dirty words, only dirty minds.

I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to someone else.

Now, if anyone in this room or the world finds those two words decadent, obscene, immoral, amoral, asexual, the words 'to come' really make you feel uncomfortable, if you think I'm rank for saying it to you, you the beholder think it's rank for listening to it, you probably can't come. And then you're of no use, because that's the purpose of life, to re-create it.

It's the supression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.

Music is my life, it is a reflection of what I go through.

I'm half Jewish, I'm half black, I look in-between. I dress funny. I play all these different styles of music on one record. It's like, What is he doing?

I am not trying to change the world. I am just offering my gift that God gave me, and if somebody is moved by it, that's beautiful.

I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.

I realized one thing for sure: you can't fuck with your musical DNA without losing something sacred. I was still looking for the sacred. And not even a figure as imposing as Prince could convince me it was there when my heart said it wasn't.

Poetry is alive because it is a medium of vision and experience. It is not necessarily comfortable. It is not necessarily safe.

Euphemisms chosen by fear are a covenant with hypocrisy and will immediately destroy the poem and eventually destroy the poet.

There are no barriers to poetry or prophecy; by their nature they are barrier-breakers, bursts of perceptions, lines into infinity. If the poet lies about his vision he lies about himself and in himself; this produces a true barrier.

Whatever is language is poetic language and if the word required by the poet does not exist in his known language then it is up to him to discover it.

Expose yourself! Show me your tattooed spine and star-encrusted tongue! Admit your feral snarl, your bloody jaws concede your nature and reveal your dreams! each beast contains its god, all gods are dreams all dreams are true — Lenore Kandel, from "Freak Show and Finale," Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel . (North

Bakbakbakbakbakbak!

B-R-B!" I screamed, which is faster to say than Be Right Back!

The themes of trauma—man's helplessness, the world's randomness, and ugly, unexpected death—are difficult ones for a person to express in art.

Then I carefully dipped my brush and wrote the characters for family, country, and book. When the examiner smiled, I knew he liked my work, so I decided to write the hardest character I knew, which was the one for virtue. It took fifteen strokes.

Instead what we have is an Eros imprisoned by the narrow definition of romance and sexuality centered on the genitals.