Quotes About Expression

What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?

rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination

if one writes one can do nothing else.

I spit upon the dancers painted by Degas. I spit upon their short bodies, their stiff stays, their toes whereupon they spin like peg-tops, above all upon that chambermaid face. They might have looked timeless, Remeses the Great, but not the chambermaid, that old maid history. I spit! I spit! I spit!

Opinion is the enemy of the artist because it arms his uninspired moment against his inspiration.

They sang but had not human tune nor words

I cannot now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers whether they are used consciously by the master of magic or half unconsciously by their successors, the poet, the musician, and the artist.

Yet surely there are men who have made their art Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, Impulsive men that look for happiness And sing when they have found it.

He did not live in a shrunken world, but knew of no less ample circumstance than did Homer himself. Perhaps the Gaelic people shall by his like bring back again the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination. What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of

And never was piping so sad, And never was piping so gay.

I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them

every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the garment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of their energies.

To me the supreme aim (of "arranging" one's ideas and writing poetry) is an act of faith and reason to make one rejoice in the midst of tragedy.

What can be explained is not poetry.

Goddamn the whole fucking world and everyone in it except you, Carlotta!

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

There must always be two kinds of art: escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep, and parable-art, that art which shall teach man to unlearn hatred and learn love.

All I have is a voice.

Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear.

Attacking bad books is not only a waste of time but also bad for the character. If I find a book really bad, the only interest I can derive from writing about it has to come from myself, from such display of intelligence, wit and malice as I can contrive. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.