Quotes About Expression

I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.

I like being free to take on any project that inspires me and to trust that the work will speak for itself.

I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost

The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.

Writing is not hard work, it is simply an obsession.

There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.

It doesn't matter what medium I perform, I just love to perform in general, if it's good work.

A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter.

The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.

The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.

I think we are in fact, losing free speech. We don't seem to care though. Many of us don't seem to notice. We will have to do a lot of work to bring back the American way to America.

Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing it, and the great effort of those who created and recorded the work is damaged.

I can deal with people who watch me on stage but I am not good in communicating with people any other way than through my work.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

A lot of artists are much more concerned about how their work is used and how it's disseminated. That, to artists, is as important as the money, for some people.

In labouring to be brief, I become obscure.

Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.

Isherwood did not so much find himself in Berlin as reinvent himself; Isherwood became a fiction, a work of art.

I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.

Every leading lady I work with, I'll see if I can get a song out of them and put it on an album.

I gave him a smile. I was aiming for sweet, but he turned a shade paler and scooted a bit farther from me. Note to self: work more on sweet and less on psycho-killer.

Me and Bianca [Stewart] would go to thrift stores like the Salvation Army. We'd pick up dope stuff no one ever heard of. But we'd put it together in ways that would work and be different.

I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments - guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums.