Quotes About Expression

For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

It may be that that we can sing what we often cannot say, whether it be from shyness, fear, lack of the right words or the passion or dramatic gift to express them. More souls have rallied to more causes by the strains of music than by straining rhetoric.

The inner me was always under attack by authority, by the way my parents wanted me to be brought up, by these English schools I went to. So I've always felt this kind of anti-authoritarian strain in me, pushing to express itself despite the obstacles.

All literature has this moral strain, but in Russian literature, it's particularly sharp.

The Internet is a fantastic, strange place where you can write an open letter and be reasonably assured that people are going to read it.

I feel weird without lipstick. Even after the first time I wore a really neon pink or a really bright red, I felt really strange without it there. My lips are a main feature, so I feel naked without them.

My most cryptic, strange songs might be my most personal, but that isn't how people are going to receive them, because they don't know the code.

I think it's great when stories are dark and strange and weirdly personal.

I think that's so strange, because they do know that we're all actors and we perform things that have not necessarily anything to do with us personally.

Laughter is a strange response. I mean, what is it? It's a spasm of some kind! Is that always joy? It's very often discomfort. It's some sort of explosive reaction. It's very complex.

It doesn't matter if people perceive me as being a little strange. I think overall, even when I am on stage, when people see me, I am setting an example.

I like a bit quirky, a bit strange, but then at the same time, I love putting a dress on... and a pair of high heels. It's like a costume.

I fight these strange personalities by getting into music.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

What in heaven's name is strange about a grandmother dancing nude? I'll bet lots of grandmothers do it.

When I write music, it's very strange: maybe it's normal, but I see things in songs in different colors.

The things in my songs are the edited highlights of my life. I don't go seeking out strange sexual experiences every day of the week.

A maverick feels like he has no choice however difficult his choice of expression. In my case, it was going backwards into tonality. It seemed so wrong. The idea that progress is going into the past in a new way is very strange, even though there are precedents.

We always thought it strange that nobody was up on that stage playing soul stuff. Maybe people were playing it in their garages, like us, but they always reverted to pure rock when they got on stage.

I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before.

I don't always know how to communicate. I think I get a bit unfiltered and a bit strange to people.

I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over 'The Onion' or 'Calvin and Hobbes.' That was considered completely normal.

Increasingly I think of myself as some strange and solitary conductor, introduced to a group of very dynamic musicians who happen to be my characters, and I have no idea how they are going to play together, and I have certainly no idea how I am going to put manners on them.