Quotes About Expression

Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples' lives for them.

The kind of people I absolutely cannot tolerate are those who never let you forget they are religious. It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods.

Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear. But the words on the page have no connection to the person who wrote them. Writers live other peoples' lives for them. I don't write autobiography.

No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have - and I think he is a dirty little beast.

Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: "Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.

Sing 'Hey to you — good-day to you' — Sing 'Bah to you — ha! ha! to you' — Sing 'Booh to you — pooh, pooh to you' — And that's what you should say!

What I remember I cannot tell though it is there in all that I say

I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.

The thing that makes poetry different from all other arts [is that] you're using language, which is what you use for everything else--telling lies and selling socks, advertising and conducting law. Whereas we don't write little concerti to each other, or paint pictures.

you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write — W.S. Merwin, from "Berryman," Flower & Hand: Poems, 1977-1983 (Copper Canyon Press; English Language edition October 1, 1996)

I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.

Let your creative juices flow and don't be afraid to take chances!

Today, comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard.

It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it.

The only compensation for the artist is the chance to feed hungry hearts.

A heart will say amazing things if it's given half a chance.

Write what you care about. If you do that, you stand the best chance of doing your best writing.

Art is not arbitrary. A fine painting is not there by accident; it is not arrived at by chance. We are sensitive to tonalities.

For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.

Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you're thinking before you've had a chance to think about it.

I throw down the gauntlet to chance. For example, I prepare the ground for a picture by cleaning my brush over the canvas. Spilling a little turpentine can also be helpful.