Quotes About Expression

As Plato said, all poets are liars. This does not mean we should mistrust them.

T. S. Eliot, who remarked in one of his essays that immature poets imitate, mature poets steal).

When it comes to literature, we are all groping in the dark, even the writer. Especially the writer. And that is a good thing--maybe one of the best things about literature. It's always an adventure of some kind.

The ideal of unmediated reporting is regularly achieved only in fiction, where the writer faithfully reports on what is going on in his imagination.

The people on the train with me don't know it, but in my head I'm dancing.

Everyone thinks I named my cat Mango because of his orange eyes, but that's not the case. I named him Mango because the sounds of his purrs and his wheezes and his meows are all various shades of yellow-orange.

The ivory girl had stepped down from her pedestal and stamped her foot. The foundling had found her voice.

Who will speak of Africa's silences? Who will know where the work of true excavation must be done? •

The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.

It's a great metaphor. For what? I don't know to this day. But I know it's a great metaphor.

Ein jüngerer, intelligent aussehender Mann mit langem Haar fragte mich, ob Filmen, bzw. Gefilmtwerden, Schaden anrichten könne, ob es eine Person vernichten könne. In meinem Herzen war die Antwort ja, aber ich sagte nein.

Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you'll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books.

Son of a bitch, I'm sick of these dolphins.

This time, there was the ghost of a reptile in Szatson's smile. 'I don't handle little problems.

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my BARBARIC YAWP over the roofs of the world

Later, Jenny would say she seldom knew what she would take a picture of when she picked up a camera, that she only knew once she peered through the viewfinder, as if the photograph had finally found her.

If the photographer isn't going to pay attention to the picture he is making, that if he thinks the camera is just a machine and not an avenue of expression, then he has no business asking anyone for anything, let alone their time and interest. Don't show the world, he said, invent the world.

Read The Story of O. Convince yourself that it was in fact written by a woman or someone who thinks like a woman.

Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.

I would love to teach every kid to say fuck. Hang on, now, hang on, listen to why. The reason is because to me, that is a word that doesn't have any effect. But stupid and dummy? You can say it to someone who is six and you can say it to someone who is a hundred and six and they will hunch their shoulders and it will be like somebody kicked them in the stomach because they are harsh, ugly words.

An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything

Art is long, life is short.

Now begin Famines of thought and feeling.

The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods.