Quotes About Expression

English was such a dense, tight language. So many hard letters, like miniature walls. Not open with vowels the way Spanish was. Our throats open, our mouths open, our hearts open. In English, the sounds were closed. They thudded to the floor. And yet, there was something magnificent about it.

wasn't allowed to claim the thing I felt and I didn't feel the thing I was supposed to claim.

Hay gente a quien su desnudez la viste -digo- , y hay gente que, al vestirse, se queda sola.

El lenguaje debió nacer así, de la pasión, no de la razón.

Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.

Every creative force has an equal power to destroy.

Growing up, sports was my outlet, my way to portray a personality. I was very shy around people but, through sports, something I was good at, I was able to make friends.

And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.

I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them and I really liked having them around.

Everybody could see when something was troubling Christine--the writers kept asking, 'What's wrong with her?' But she never came to me directly to say she wasn't happy. That was not her way.

All my emotions and only my emotions are fueling my contribution to the world

So...who do you want to hit with your bouquet? I know how much you like slamming it around in a crowd." His

Damn it, Lou!' Two hours later, Cam pounded at the steering wheel of his SUV, which was parked in my driveway. 'Stop being so dramatic. I can't second-guess every fucking word that flies out of my fucking mouth. If you pick, pick, pick at every goddamn little thing and ignore what I'm really trying to say, you're the one that's not respecting me enough to listen.

choosing words is harder than I thought.

Jason tilts his head toward me, his hand moving slyly across his book. Stupid. Speech. Woman.

What I love about art is that anything is possible. Bees can be pink. Trees can be purple. It's like taking the world as it is and then swirling it around to show how it could be" -Salma

Looking close can make something beautiful. Not everything worth keeping has to be useful. If you don't have the words you need, borrow someone else's.

I like art because there are no wrong answers. It's all about how you see the world. So you can be completely yourself" -Salma

Sometimes I can change how I feel about something by drawing it.

I just want my relationship to be more for myself rather than a public statement.

If we blow into the narrow end of the shofar, we will be heard far. But if we choose to be Mankind rather than Jewish and blow into the wider part, we will not be heard at all; for us America will have been in vain.

I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be—not to have a "career," but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.

Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom.

A genuine essay has no educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of the free mind at play. Though it is written in prose, it is closer in kind to poetry than to any other form. Like a poem, a genuine essay is made out of lenguage and character and mood and temperament and pluck and chance.