Quotes About Expression

Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do -- like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.

Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.

The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

In order to speak to the world what I have heard, I am not bound to step into the street. I may remain standing in the door of my ancestral house. …

We say 'far away'; the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form, 'There where someone cries out: "Oh mother, I am lost." ' The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a seven-syllabled word whose precise meaning is, 'They stare at one another, each waiting for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but are not able to do.

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

Put accurate punctuation at the heart of your writing.

To give the whole store away to match what this year's market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.

Like a modern counterpart of a tightly-corseted Victorian, she needed to unbutton herself, learn the act of relaxation.

Advice to Young Poets Never pretend to be a unicorn by sticking a plunger on your head.

Even the most political poem is an act of faith.

In the republic of poetry, the guard at the airport will not allow you to leave the country until you declaim a poem for her and she says Ah! Beautiful.

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Most people have a passive relationship with music and clothes, with culture. But music was my first contact with anything creative. Music is it, as far as I'm concerned.

Photographers, like painters, seldom retire.

the picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life'.

If you are painter it's your whole existence. It's not an activity

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

Reflexes and instincts are not pretty. It is their decoration that initiates art.

Whenever ideas fail, men invent words.

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Entertainment and art are not isolated.

Visit any comedy club, or watch Bridesmaids, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy or Louis CK's routines on YouTube, and you'll realize that Americans pay comedians millions of dollars to talk about things most of them have felt, or thought, but never said in public. In