Quotes About Expression

To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal!

He was a marvelous talker, a magical talker, and I wish I were able to give a better idea what he said, but it is impossible for a mediocre intellect to render the speech of a superior one

I think about it quite a bit, actually, that look on his face. I think about a lot of things. I think about the first time I ever saw a birch tree; about the last time I saw Julian; about the first sentence that I ever learned in Greak. ?????? ?? ????. Beauty is harsh. ? Donna Tartt, The Secret History

What do you think about America? Everyone always smiles so big! Well—most people. Maybe not so much you. I think it looks stupid.

That little guy, said Boris in the car on the way to Antwerp. You know the painter saw him-he wasn't painting that bird from his mind, you know? That's a real little guy, chained up on the wall, there. If I saw him mixed up with dozen other birds all the same kind, I could pick him out, no problem. And he's right. So could I. And if I could go back in time I'd clip the chain in a heartbeat and never care a minute that the picture was never painted.

Birds can sing and fish can swim and I can do this.

And that's why I've chosen to write these pages as I've written them. For only by stepping into the middle zone, the polychrome edge between truth and untruth, is it tolerable to be here and writing this at all.

Books are written by the alone for the alone.

Because: if our secrets define us, as opposed to the face we show the world: then the painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am. And it's there: in my notebooks, every page, even though it's not.

Because: if our secret defines us, as opposed to the face we show the world: then the painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am. And it's there: in my notebooks, every page, even though it's not. Dream and magic, magic and delirium. The Unified Field Theory. A secret about a secret.

Bad artists copy, good artists steal.

We have art in order not to die from the truth. — NIETZSCHE

Because—isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture—? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart.

really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular.

And if what they say is true--if every great painting is really a self-portrait--what, if anything, is Fabritius saying about himself?

You know what Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.

Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.

In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know the language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.

One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.

loose tendons; dance world's loss; performance art's gain

In a certain sense it was simply play-acting but at Hampden, where creative expression was valued above all else, play-acting was itself a kind of work, and people went about their grief as seriously as small children will sometimes play quite grimly and without pleasure in make-believe offices and stores.

Butthole," he sobbed.

Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair.

There's only a double abyss: between painter and imprisoned bird; between the record he left of the bird and our experience of it, centuries later.