Quotes About Expression

I'm really just trying to do things that I enjoy. I'm trying to play music that I like to play and like to listen to. I just have to think if I like those different kinds of music, there are other people who aren't so different from me.

Clearly, I'm not trying to write songs for the radio.

A man doesn't wear a red cowboy hat.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

Writin' songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along.

Beyond hoping that someone will like one of my songs, I don't think about how a song will be received. I just hope that, when somebody hears one of my songs, they'll want to hear it again.

If you forget the words to your own song, you can always claim artistic license. Forget the words to the national anthem and you're screwed.

It's really a lot easier to write about things that are problematic. Who wants to hear how happy you are?

I don't know where creativity comes from, but I think everybody has the ability to be creative. I think what's important about creativity starts when you're very young and how we're allowed to experience our imagination. The people who bring us up and teach us are fundamental in either encouraging creativity or discouraging creativity. My imagination was always encouraged.

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.

Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.

Art, true art, is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Great emotion always tends to become rhythmic, and out of that tendency the forms of art have been evolved. Art becomes artificial only when the forms take precedence over the emotion.

Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.

When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way.

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot We women who write poetry. And when you think How few of us there've been, it's queerer still. I wonder what it is that makes us do it, Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise, The fragments of ourselves.

Though old the thought and oft expressed, 'Tis his at last who says it best.

Poets so their verses write, Heap them full of life and light, And then fling them to the rude Mumbling of the multitude.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.

The feeling of love is a rich feeling, but the expression of love in word or deed is a joy.

Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.

I think I came across Cecil Taylor a bit later, in 65 or 66. That really impressed me - Cecil Taylor is an amazing character... Both his music and the way he approaches the instrument are astonishing.

not like Nicolas Cage who always just plays Nicolas Cage in every film. Daniel