Quotes About Expression

Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn't say them, couldn't sort out my feelings about them, couldn't keep them bottled inside me.

Shyness is shit. It isn't cute or feminine or appealing. It's torment, and it's shit.

Your body said one thing. Your words said another." It moved a sensory arm to the back of his neck, looping one coil loosely around his neck. "This is the position," it said. "I'll stop now if you like.

Sometimes writing about a thing makes it easier to stand.

I'm trying to speak–to write-the truth. I"m trying to be clear. I'm not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them.

Sometimes you have to remember a feeling you haven't had for a long time and bring it back so you can transmit it to someone else or use a feeling you have about one thing to help someone understand something else.

There was an English major. He wanted to be a writer and tell our story from the inside—which had only been done thirty or forty times before.

Às vezes, eu escrevia coisas porque não conseguia dizê-las, não conseguia entender meus sentimentos em relação a elas, não conseguia mantê-las presas dentro de mim. Era um tipo de escrita que eu sempre destruía depois. Não era para ninguém.

There are easier ways to say these things," it admitted. "But some things shouldn't be said easily.

In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was. That is my reason for writing and assembling this book. It has always been my way to sort through my feelings by writing.

Vocabulary and grammar are your primary tools. They're most effectively used, even most effectively abused, by people who understand them.

And, of course, he didn't shout. He tends not to. It's a pity. His disapproval might be easier to take if it were quick and loud. It was, as usual, quiet and intense.

Sometimes I write to keep from going crazy. There's a world of things I don't feel free to talk to anyone about.

Sometimes she sounded as though she'd never left, and sometimes she sounded as though she'd never been near any part of the south. She seemed to be able to turn the accent on and off. She tended to turn it on for comforting people, and for threatening to kill them.

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.

Touched by poetry, language is more fully language and at the same time is no longer language: it is a poem.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

There can be a "boom" in petroleum or wheat, but there can't be a boom in the novel and less still in poetry.

Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.

When we learn to speak, we learn to translate.

J'ai fait un art selon moi. Je l'ai fait avec les yeux ouverts sur les merveilles du monde visible, et, quoi qu'on en ait pu dire, avec le souci constant d'obéir aux lois du naturel et de la vie.