Quotes About Expression

When I work alone, my process is like painting. With Fleetwood Mac, it's more like movie making.

That's one strength that Stevie has. She's really not a strong instrumentalist in any way. Her instrument is her voice and her words. And it keeps her focused on the very center of that.

Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction.

Good mathematics is a soliloquy, communicated.

Having multiple personalities is the only way I can justify talking to myself.

Treat mathematics as a language, not as a vocation.

Tried to give you warning but everyone ignores me) Told you everything loud and clear But nobody's listening Called to you so clearly but you don't want to hear me Told you everything loud and clear But nobody's listening

Occasionally, for a fleeting, horrified moment, she caught a glimpse of herself. The shrill note in her voice. The stupid words. It was as if there were something heavy weighing on her tongue that had to be removed immediately—that expression, It's time I took matters in hand, uttered in such a phony way—and out of her mouth she plucked a big, shiny bug. And then another. And one more. Her mouth full of big, shiny bugs.

The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.

Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.

I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.

Books and music saved me as a teenager because it was through them that I realized that I wasn't alone in my obsessive love for words and music.

My characters seem real because they are drawn from the realities of my life. I didn't have to research their pain; I just tapped into my own.

I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.

As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.

I write on a computer, but I've run the complete gambit. When I was very young, I wrote with a ballpoint pen in school notebooks. Then I got pretentious and started writing with a dip pen on parchment (I wrote at least a novel-length poem that way). Moved on to a fountain pen. Then a typewriter, then an electric self-correct. Then someone gave me a word processor and I was amazed at being able to fit ten pages on one of those floppy discs.

I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.

The best artists know what to leave out. They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren't necessary.

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.

What I have had to face--and what incidentally drives me on--is the sad realization that unless I represent these ideas, they will (more often than not) go unarticulated.

There are only two ways to deal with the media: either elect to take the Buddha's vow of eternal silence, or make one's voice known as responsibly as one humanly can, and take the consequences.

Liefde is niet alleen maar hartzeer of vreugde. Liefde krijgt vorm door wat wij ermee doen.

There were many painters there, painters of every sort and of every degree of eminence—Max Ernst, for instance, one of the founders of surrealism

I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.