Quotes About Expression

for music alone can abolish differences of language or culture between two people and invoke something indestructible within them.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

In Japan censorship is practiced not only by the government when it tampers with textbooks but by the media, which police themselves.

Mine your words as if digging for diamonds and gold.

What a beautiful treasure tears can be. - Kadar den Arnaud

If your feet are firmly planted on the ground you'll never be able to dance.

What would I do with billions? I don't need it. Would it make me a better artist?

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.

Yes, of course, there's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. It's really a machine for making falsehoods. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. Almost everything except things like "pass the gravy" is a lie of a sort. And that being the case, I shall shut up. Oh, and... pass the gravy.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.

I hesitate to demonstrate my ignorance, which is never a good idea, by the way. Because you only get oppressed.

There are bars with women wearing shirts with stiff necks and ties and they are terribly proud to be perverts, as if that weren't something nobody can do anything about.

A writer in the act of writing must fear neither his own words nor anything else in the world. A writer who is afraid is no true writer.

And sometimes somebody is laughing--and that laugh is stuffing all of yesterday's and today's anger back into the mouth that it's oozing from.

Brahms writes music. I just write songs.

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.

Art is a staple, like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?" "Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

Normal people do not create art.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

You cannot be the good all the time — sometimes it is necessary to get angry. [Vincent Van Gogh]