Quotes About Expression

And freedom? Oh, freedom. Well that's just some people talking. Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

I just shrug, not knowing what to say. How can I explain to anyone that stories are like air to me, I breathe them in and let them out over and over again.

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head becoming sentences written by Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

The first time I write my full name Jacqueline Amanda Woodson without anybody' help on a clean white page in my composition notebook, I know If I wanted to I could write anything Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head becoming sentences written by Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

You got something you love, little man? Then you good. You love food? You cook. You love clothes? You design. You love the wind and water? You sail.

My whole family knows I can't sing. My voice, my sister says, is just left of the key. Just right of the tune. But I sing anyway, whenever I can.

I love the physical act of writing as well as how I grow with each situation I put on the page.

That's all anybody is-themselves. People all the time wanting to change that.

My fingers curl into fists, automatically This is the way, my mother said, of every baby's hand. I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm's—raised and fisted or Martin's—open and asking or James's—curled around a pen.

That's what up , Amari said. Read those poems in all kinds of American, son.

I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm's—raised and fisted or Martin's—open and asking or James's—curled around a pen. I

And when we pressed our heads to each other's hearts how did we not hear Carmen McRae singing? In Angela's fisted hands, Billie Holiday staggered past us and we didn't know her name. Nina Simone told us how beautiful we were and we didn't hear her voice.

Sometimes I'm just sitting in my room and a song will come on the radio that stops something inside of me, makes me sit up straight on my bed and listen. Sometimes, it's the piano chords, a sweet riff that has all eighty-eight keys talking. Sometimes it's the drums—high hat telling a story—I don't know how to explain the way music moves through my brain and my blood and my bones.

As we dance, I am not Melody, I am a narrative, someone's almost forgotten story. Remembered.

We opened our mouths and let the stories that had burned nearly to ash in our bellies finally live outside of us.

When the trumpeter picked up a solo and the music lifted past where the voices had just been, I felt like my ribs were shattering. There was so much in all of it. Just. So. Much. I wanted to say to Iris, It all feels like it's trying to drift out into somebody's eternity.

But on paper, things can live forever. On paper, a butterfly never dies.

Un jour, d'elle-même, elle se farda les ongles en rouge. Jamais, jusque là, elle n'avait osé le faire. Ce qui la saisit, ce fut que ses ongles ressentirent le froid du vernis. Elle eut alors le sentiment que notre corps en a toujours de nouvelles à nous apprendre.

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.

The French call mot juste the word that exactly fits. Why is this word so hard to find? The reasons are many. First, we don't always know what we mean and are too lazy too find out.

First Principle: Have a point and make it by means of the best word.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.