Quotes About Expression

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.

La ponctuation, ce n'est pas de l'orthographe, c'est de la pensée.

It was, if you like, an oasis in the general desert of childish and adult ignorance where we could safely bring out our thoughts and not have them denigrated, laughed at, or trampled upon, even when they deserved it. A place like that is precious.

I don't like the idea of people who don't sing to themselves when they're all alone. They're too sober for me. At least hum-- anybody can do that.

If you travel to the States... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift' they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains' they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git.'

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say Gentlemen to the person with whom he is conversing.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.

One pays a price for innovation, and innovators, knowing this, are hardly conciliators: books are not written specifically to please others; they are written, like it or not, to please oneself.

Americans and British have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator,' we say 'lift' ... they say 'President,' we say 'stupid psychopathic git.'

Entonces hablo para sentir que existo, porque si no hablara mi lengua se paralizaría, mi corazón dejaría de latir, toda yo me secaría deslumbrada.

Me salí de mi carne, gocé el goce más alto: oponer una frase de basalto al genio oscuro que nos desintegra.

Cómo decir este deseo de alma? Un deseo divino me devora; pretendo hablar, pero se rompe y llora esto que llevo adentro y no se calma.

Qué mundos tengo dentro del alma que ha tiempo vengo pidiendo medios para volar?

Casas enfiladas, casas enfiladas, casas enfiladas, Cuadrados, cuadrados, cuadrados, casas enfiladas. Las gentes ya tienen el alma cuadrada, ideas en fila y angula en la espalda; yo mismo he vertido ayer una lagrima, Dios mio, cuadrada.

La vi escrita al tramonto, indescifrable. Un pentagrama sobre el campo alzado: y era un millar de pájaros, cubriendo de negras notas los tirantes hilos. Se agrupaban en llaves y en acordes en el papiro rosa de la tarde; (y a un golpe de batuta abandonaban la partitura locos de alegría.

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.

Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like.

Surely music is not only the food of love, but of poetry as well.

Most patriotic verse, however spirited, is verse only, nothing or little more.

Piping a simple song for thinking hearts, is all very well. But it will not do to say, or to suggest, or to allow it to be inferred, that doing this makes a man as great a poet.

The Poet, too, has a garden, and one by no means to be disdained; and Veronica told me that when, the other day, some tactless person asked him which of his works he likes best, he replied, "My garden."

Almost as essential to poetry, and equally as regards poetry of the loftiest and poetry of the lowliest kind, is lucidity, or clearness of expression. No poet of much account is ever obscure, unless the text happens to be corrupt.