Quotes About Expression

I was doing the LGBTQ version of a minstrel show.

The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of life has given him a subject, he is spared the youthful writer's self-torment and soul-searching.

What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island?

Many great writers address audiences who do not exist; to address passionately and sometimes with very great wisdom people who do not exist has this advantage—that there will always be a group of people who, seeing a man shouting apparently at somebody or other, and seeing nobody else in sight, will think it is they who are being addressed.

Art is the expression of an enormous preference.

We are against the glorification of "the People," as we are against snobbery. It is not necessary to be an outcast bohemian, to be unkempt or poor, any more than it is necessary to be rich or handsome, to be an artist. Art is nothing to do with the coat you wear. A top-hat can well hold the Sixtine. A cheap cap could hide the image of Kephren.

There is nothing contemptible about an intoxicated man (if it is nothing more than a bookful of words or a roomful of notes that he has got drunk on).

Anything that survives the artist's death is not life but belated drama.

Anyone who says you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art.

I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

Jazz is democracy in music.

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician

My words are not that powerful. I started saying in 1985 I don't think we should have a music talking about ni**ers and b*tches and h*es. It had no impact. I've said it. I've repeated it. I still repeat it. To me, that's more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee.

Because jazz musicians improvise under the pressure of time, what's inside comes out pure. It's like being pressed to answer a question before you have a chance to get your lie straight. The first thought is usually the truth.

Jazz is the art of timing. It teaches you when. When to start, when to wait, when to step it up, and when to take your time—indispensable tools for making someone else happy.

You are creative, whoever you are. Respect your own creativity and respect the creativity and creative space of other people.

The most prized possession in this music is your own unique sound. Through sound, jazz leads you to the core of yourself and says "Express that." Through jazz, we learn that people are never all one way. Each musician has strengths and weaknesses. We enjoy hearing musicians struggle with their parts, and if we go one step further and learn to accept the strong and weak parts of people around us and of ourselves, life comes at us much more easily. A judge has a hard time out here.

Music was just one of the tools we employed to create excitement. The jazzman's objective, however, was solely musical: Through his improvisation, he wanted to take people deep into his actual feelings and his world.

A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it. But it is unbecoming in an artist to talk about inspiration; that is the reader's business.

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."

A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign.

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.