Quotes About Expression

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

She smiled at him as if butter wouldn't melt

I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one.

don't write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.

her dangling braids the color of rain.

a tongue blistered with smiling

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places.

when you lie awake in the evenings counting your birthdays turn the blood that clots on your tongue into poems. poems. from "The Message of Thelma Sayles

I don't write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions." #LucilleClifton

The perfect man? A poet on a motorcycle.

First thing, I throw on some jeans, a T-shirt and my Keds sneakers and make coffee. That is actually my favorite time of day. That is when I do my songwriting, when I am in writing mode.

The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

The way I look at life, whatever I'm doing at that time in my life is going to be reflected in my songs, for the most part.

Hay tales misterios en el corazón humano; abismos tan profundos, de amor, de abnegación, de generosidad, que la palabra no conseguirá jamás explicarlos. Hay que sentir y callar. Por eso una mirada, un abrazo, un ademán con la mano, dicen más que todo cuanto la pluma más hábilmente manejada pueda describir.

All art is but imitation of nature.

Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say let speech harmonize with life.

Every writer is the amanuensis to their characters

He'd never have to know why I made it, a negative energy cake, and at least it would keep him quiet for a while, because the roof of his mouth would be all clogged up, the fact that where's all this aggression coming from, dear me, the fact that unless you're upbeat enough, and immune to criticism, you're just a sitting duck if someone makes a single untoward remark.

I was sort of in denial about doing country for awhile but I sort of grew up and realized who I was, what I wanted to say. I think country music is the best music in the world and I'm glad to be doing a country album. I hope people will love it as much as I loved making it.

I love Lady Antebellum and Miranda Lambert - they write from the heart. But it's hard to find a country music lover in L.A. None of my friends really listen to it, and they hate getting in the car with me because I just blast Taylor Swift.

I took guitar a while back, and my heart wasn't in it at the time, but I'm ready to try it again. I sing in the car, at home - it's a huge part of my life, especially since I'm from Tennessee.