Quotes About Expression

If you're not attempting to get someone to see, feel, think, or act in a particular manner, why bother communicating at all?

The artist is the closest man comes to being God.

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.

The best thing about acting is that I get to lose myself in another character and actually get paid for it... It's a great outlet. I'm not really sure who I am - it seems I change every day.

Some people don't get it when I'm being sarcastic.

Certo, lo riconosco, la castità è spaventosa: ma soltanto nei primi tempi che la si sceglie ed affronta... Poi avviene qualcosa di simile, lei mi può capire, a quel che succede nell'arte, per chi la fa: i limiti e le preclusioni espressive ne sono la forma, non sono limiti e preclusioni. Allo stesso modo, la castità è la forma più sublime cui l'amor proprio può accedere: un far diventare arte la vita.

La scienza, come la poesia, si sa che sta ad un passo dalla follia [...]

Bisognerebbe entrare nell'inesprimibile senza sentire la necessità di esprimerlo...

nulla è più delizioso per uno scrittore del divagare, dell'estravagare: lo scrivere sembra diventare pura, trasparente esistenza - notiamo di quanto profitto siano per la letteratura i miti e le cronache dei gemelli, dei sosia, delle usurpazioni e/o contestazioni di identità, delle sostituzioni notturne e degli sdoppiamenti o dimezzamenti tipo Jekyll-Hyde.

Generally, men told stories to boast, but women were different. They wanted to look at their words in the air and extract the meaning, and if you shut up and listened, they'd tell you very interesting things indeed.

All the time she had been grasping the air with her hands, in an impassioned effort to express herself. 'Here was not just food, but an experience. It was all of Popisho, the smells and textures, it was - it was - all our love and our losses and our beauty, struggles, history, our childhoods ... it was perfect, it was perfect for me.

When a woman weeps, it is a man's shame.

I play because my loneliness is very great, very deep- I fear it has no bottom at all! I stand on the edge of an abyss and hurl words, many heavy words, into it, but they fall without a sound. I hurl into it laughter, threats and moans. I spit into it. I fling into it heaps of stones and rocks. I throw mountains into it- ant still it remains silent and empty.

Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and distances.

My loneliness is very great. I am not in need of friends, but I must speak of Myself and I have no one to speak to.

Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.

Cordelia was thinking how human beings can invent words, how they can line up their invented words side by side on paper. It was magic.

How could I write this when I don't even dare think about it? I am terribly anguished, yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memory...I know that once this has been written down, I shall be delivered. You must know, otherwise I shall be persecuted to the end of my living days. But shall I be able to express with mere words the horror of that day?

I didn't have time to be anyone's muse... I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.

I went on dancing in my grotesque disguise, but not before I told him: "I am lonely and miserable but I am wearing my last skin. Since you are almost face to face with the Gods do not abandon me." In human language, this is called love.