Quotes About Expression

Writing on architecture is not like history or poetry.

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do; there are movements that are involuntary proofs of what the soul feels.

Birdie! You is too much word-speaking!

Between what we know and what we cannot hope to know about how we come to be as we are lies an emotional dumping ground into which exceptional writers pour all the art they are capable of making.

Once again, as it has with irregular regularity throughout my waking life, that sickening sense of language buried deep within comes coursing through arms, legs, chest, throat. If only I could make it reach the brain, the conversation with myself might perhaps begin.

If she would work he wouldn't have to keep her in the house. She wouldn't be crazy, and she could tell him to go to hell. Did you ever think about that, my brilliant daughter? That maybe she's crazy because she can't tell him to go to hell? When a woman can't tell a man to go to hell, I have noticed, she is often crazy.

People have a right to their lives,' she says softly.

This book is for Randall Jarrell, the man who believed we are devoted to the act of making literature because it leads to the act of reading.

The life we lead as writers is awful—it's boring, tedious, lonely," -Vivian Gornick

Letter writing is not the noble enterprise. Remaining fully expressive is the noble enterprise.

Those of us who crave the expressive but can't shake off the melancholy walk the street.

since fantasy play is the glue that binds together all other pursuits, including the early teaching of reading and writing skills, I am compelled to put it on display as clearly as I can.

if Saint Bruce doesn't like your poem, he chops your head off.

Do you think you could stop crying for a minute? It makes conversation a bit difficult.

Sometimes I dread the truth of the lines I say. But the dread must never show.

I never found accents difficult, after learning languages.

One is just an interpreter of what the playwright thinks, and therefore the greater the playwright, the more satisfying it is to act in the plays.

Feminists wish women to seem like men. They're not men.

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don't care attitude about clothes. You don't care, you just do it and it looks great.

Theory is intermodal, theory is the concept of art.

I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart's content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view.

For me art and chess are closely related, both are forms in which the self finds beauty and expression.

In this respect I suppose I'm the total opposite of Garry. With his very emotive body language at the board he shows and displays all his emotions. I don't.

I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.