Quotes About Expression

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

I]n my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it.

And suddenly she was at him, after him with her fists, her struggling weight; he squeezed her against him, regretfully conscious even now, as her pinned fists flailed his shoulders and her face crumpled into contorted weeping and the sharp smell of perfume was scalded from her, that the expression, of serene superiority, of a beautiful secret continually tasted, was still on his face.

Whatever men make, she says, what they felt when they made it is there...Man is a means for turning things into spirit and turning spirit into things.

I glance around at the nest we have made, at the floorboards polished by our bare feet, at the continents of stain on the ceiling like an old and all-wrong discoverer's map, at the earnestly bloated canvases I conscientiously cover with great streaks straining to say what even I am begining to suspect is the unsayable thing, and I grow frightened.

I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles, if I had to. The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.

The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and that he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.

The beast is dry and mottled, shedding skin as minutes drop from life, a wristy piece of dogged ugliness, its labors meant to carve from language beauty, that beauty which lifts free of flesh to find itself in print

My first thought, as a child, was that the artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and that he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.

We love too late... Oh why, why may we never join hand to hand, or give back speech truly?

Being a great writer is not the same as writing great.

As they deepen together he feels impatience that through all their twists they remain separate flesh; he cannot dare enough, now that she is so much his friend in this search; everywhere they meet a wall. The body lacks voice to sing its own song.

With a pleasantness that amounts to arrogance he says, Hi.

Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others.

Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully.

Remember: you must participate in the creative world you want to become part of.

It's always up to other people to say if something is art. I hate it when people say, I'm an artist. I think, well, I'll be the judge of that. And I don't think artist is a job description. It's a critique, a favorable critique, that someone else might apply to your work.

Nothing shouts midlife crisis louder than driving a convertible.

How could you think of such awful things? liberal critics always ask. How else could I possibly amuse myself? I always wonder.

It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else

He listened to his words fall as if from the mouth of another, and watched his father's face, which received those words as a stone receives the repeated blows of a fist.

I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me in theater.

talent is evenly distributed. You never know how many talented people are out there until you invite and inspire them to be creative.

Why does the person with the least to say usually take the longest to say it?