Quotes About Expression

It has seemed to me that, unless our poetry conforms to some stereotypical notion of Native American history and culture in the past tense or unless it depicts spiritual relationship to the natural world of animals and plants and landscape, it goes unrecognized. We do and we do not write of treaties, battles, and drums. We do and we do not write about eagles, spirits, and canyons. Native poetry may be those things, but it is not only those things.

There is no such thing as an empty word, only one that is worn out yet remains full.

Why does women's underwear have lace and flowers all over it? You never see men's underwear with a big wrench in the middle of it.

When I write, I am trying through the movement of my fingers to reach my head. I'm trying to build a word ladder up to my brain.

Worrying about originality is like worrying about the best place to hang your wall phone.

suonieni pimeys tunkee esiin, silmistäni, korvistani, suustani navastani

First evidence of this is when a toddler points to things. Finger-pointing is code.

Make it interesting and it will be true: this is what story writers live by.

Kunst ist dazu da, die Wirklichkeit zu verhindern...

I would have liked to cry: the make-up stopped me, it looked just right, with the cracks, with the places where it was beginning to flake off, tears would have ruined all that. I could cry later, if I still felt like it.

Si sa infatti che il vero bisogno, quando lo si avverta nella voce, quando lo si legga sul volto, ha il potere di chiudere le borse.

Táblákat kellene állítani a kortárs regények elé: ideköltözni tilos, letelepedni tilos, itt berendezkedni tilos. Aki szilárd talajt akar a lába alá, annak sokkal több kell, mint amit az irodalom és m?vészet valaha is nyújthat.

I am a clown...and I collect moments.

Ich bin ein Clown und sammle Augenblicke.

One thing is certain, anyone who collects art is not an artist.

When I am asked how or why I wrote this or that, I always find myself quite embarrassed. I would gladly furnish not merely the questioner, but myself as well, with an exhaustive answer, but can never do so. I cannot recreate the context in its entirety, yet I wish that I could, so that at least the literature I myself make might be made slightly less of a mysterious process than bridge-building and bread-baking.

Don't send a poet to London.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

Where words leave off, music begins.

Action speaks louder than words.

I didn't originally intend to be an artist; I was much more interested in decorative arts--daily life, beautiful objects.

Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time.

In terms of having views and being prepared to express them, yes, I think New Zealand's had a leadership role in a lot of things.

I wish you wouldn't say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside.