Quotes About Expression

When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. You breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.

I continue to admit that Italian is not my language, that it's an adopted language I love and use without possession. But I also ask myself: Who possesses a language, and why? Is it a question of lineage? Mastery? Use? Affect? Attachment? What does it mean, in the end, to belong to a language?

When I began writing stories as a child, I wrote copies of what I read, and in many respects, that is what I've have continued doing, in only a slightly less obvious way. The illusion of artistic freedom is just that, an illusion. No words are "my words"—I merely arrange and use them in a certain way.

It was only by self-translating that I finally understood what Paul Valéry meant when he said that a work of art was never finished, only abandoned... The act of self-translation enables the author to restore a previously published work to its most vital and dynamic state—that of a work-in-progress—and to repair and recalibrate as needed.

Credo che tradurre sia il modo più profondo, più intimo di leggere qualcosa. Una Traduzione è un bellissimo incontro dinamico tra due lingue, due testi, due scrittori. Implica uno sdoppiamento, un rinnovamento. Nel passato amavo tradurre dal latino, dal greco antico, dal bengalese. È stato un modo di avvicinarmi alle diverse lingue, di sentirmi legata ad autori lontanissimi da me, nello spazio e nel tempo.

Quando la lingua con cui ci si identifica è lontana, si fa di tutto per tenerla viva.

on the surface of the Grand Canal, my writing in Italian is something impalpable. Nebulous, like the fog. I'm afraid that the bridge between me and Italian doesn't, ultimately, exist. That it will remain, at best, a chimera.

L'inglese rimane il presente: permanente, indelebile. la matrigna non mi abbandona. Per quanto sia una lingua imposta, mi ha regalato una voce pulita, corretta, per sempre.

Una lingua nuova è quasi una vita nuova, grammatica e sintassi ti rifondo, scivoli dentro un'altra logica e un altro sentimento.

Credo che leggere in una lingua straniera sia il modo più intimo di leggere.

La lingua è vera, ma la maniera in cui la assorbo e utilizzo sembra finita. Un lessico cercato acquisito, resta per sempre anomalo, come se fosse artefatto, anche se non lo è.

In questo libro la lingua non è soltanto lo strumento ma anche il soggetto. L'italiano resta la maschera, il filtro, lo sbocco, il mezzo. Il distacco senza il quale non riesco a creare niente. Ed è questo nuovo distacco che mi aiuta a mostrare il mio volto.

Grazie a questo progetto di scrittura spero che un pezzo di me possa restare qui, ed è consolante, anche se mi auguro che ogni libro al mondo appartenga a tutti, oppure a nessuno, da nessuna parte.

È bella, certo, ma non c'entra la bellezza. Sembra una lingua con cui devo avere una relazione.

Moushumi smiles as she always smiles for a camera, her mouth closed, her head tilted slightly downward and to the left.

Writing in another language reactivates the grief of being between two worlds, of being on the outside. Of feeling alone and excluded.

All a work of art can do is present the surface. I can't know the insides of people. I know very little about the inside of myself.

That's just the way people's brains work. If you want to talk about something, you have to reduce it to a form that can be understood. That's one of the reasons I'm not good about boiling down music.

I use a wide selection of colours. It is impossible to produce work like mine using only the primary colours as they only mix a certain range of colour.

The majority of my work is from life. I spend most fine days from May to October painting outside.

My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect.

I use about 20 different colours to retain the luminance in my work.

The artist himself is often surprised at the finished work of art. He cannot tell 'how it happened', nor could he repeat the feat at someone's bidding.

Theater people work by instinct. I've never known a really calculated artistic decision.