Quotes About Expression

The Fflict recognized five genders: male, female, zhial, yal, and neuter. Aul was zhial, and ze liked zis pronouns accurately stated. I would too, in zis position.

I don't look smug." "You always look smug. You have resting smug face.

Hickory clicked something to Dickory in their native tongue; Dickory clicked back. Hickory responded, and Dickory replied, it seemed a bit forcefully. And then, God help me, Hickory actually sighed.

I'm saying pay attention to when it makes sense to say something," Vann said. "And pay attention to when it makes sense to hold it in for the moment. I get that you're used to saying what you think to anyone, anytime. That comes from being an entitled rich kid.

I do not mind when you tell me what you want and put that first instead of last.

What is competent writing? Competent writing is writing that efficiently describes ideas and concepts to an audience, using a grammar that the audience can understand.

words themselves are action; they do not simply describe the world but in a very real sense make the world. Therefore it makes sense to pay attention to the worlds people are attempting to create in their words.

I love her more than I actually express in words—an irony for a writer—and am every day genuinely amazed I get to spend my life with her.

Ultimately, people write to be understood (excepting Gertrude Stein and Tristan Tzara, who were intentionally being difficult).

So all of it—local and archived data—went up with the lab building." Vann glanced over to me with an expression that I suspect meant these people were sloppy.

I think I'll keep my own opinion out of the 'sale' rack, if it's all the same to you.

In ground forces, when someone does you a favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it's a little thing, it's a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of habit. It's just an expression. Got it, Dahl said. No actual blowjob forthcoming, Duvall said. To be clear. It's the thought that counts.

With sentences, shorter is better than longer:

How much?" Patz said nothing but gave Kiva a look that she interpreted as saying a whole fuckton.

First, I want my pants," Kerensky said. Everyone turned to Duvall, who gave everyone a what? expression and then pulled Kerensky's pants out of her duffel and threw them at him. "Second," Kerensky said, fumbling into his pants, "I want to know why we're here.

Tom grinned through his mask; I saw it through the eye crinkles

As was Max's method of demo making, all the hooks in the song were worked up to their finished state, but most of the verses were unfinished, often mere vowel sounds. There was no bridge yet, because, as Lunt puts it, "Max would say, 'If you don't like the song by then, fuck you'—in his polite Swedish way, of course.

all our suffering is an expression and a reflection of the distance between reality and our desires and beliefs.

player hummed for a second, then sweet sad acoustic guitar filled the air, arpeggiated cascades that transformed the cramped space of the room. The voice that followed was smoky and haunting, filled with loss:

It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.