473 Expression Quotes

Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other - it doesn't matter who it is - and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

There's nothing on my mind that couldn't be expressed by a long insane outburst of hysterical rage.

I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.

Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.

The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a human being. It is to enable those experiences to be intelligible and generally recognized within the total framework of an ideal world.

Music was my way of keeping people from looking through and around me. I wanted the heavies to know I was around.

All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don't know what they are talking about.

I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

It is not about which artist is more skilled than which other artist. It is about creating what is in you to create. A lack of confidence in oneself is like a thief, It steals from the world that which might be worthy.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren't interested in), people don't speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.

Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun.

In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

My show is my statement. What I have to say is on the screen. My life is my own. I don't want to talk about my private self. Why should I?

Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.

I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

My intent is to tell the truth as I know it, realizing that what is true for me may be blasphemy for others.

All the world knows how to cry but not all the world knows how to sigh. Sighing is extra.

I sing about life.

I write music with an exclamation mark!

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution.

The creative process must be explored not as the product of sickness, but as representing the highest degree of emotional health, as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves.

If I look confused it's because I'm thinking.

I'm an artist; art has no color and no sex.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

My major aim was to shape a book which would make its own comment, a wordless statement: to talk through the way it was shaped. As I have said, this was not noticed

When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. ~ 37

Music is the purest form of art... therefore true poets, they who are seers, seek to express the universe in terms of music... The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside. His idea and his expression are brother and sister; very often they are born as twins. In music the heart reveals itself immediately; it suffers not from any barrier of alien material. Therefore though music has to wait for its completeness like any other art, yet at every step it gives out the beauty of the whole. As the material of expression even words are barriers, for their meaning has to be construed by thought. But music never has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses what no words can ever express. What is more, music and the musician are inseparable. When the singer departs, his singing dies with him; it is in eternal union with the life and joy of the master. This world song is never for a moment separated from its singer. It is not fashioned from any outward material. It is his joy itself taking never-ending form. It is the great heart sending the tremor of its thrill over the sky. There is a perfection in each individual strain of this music, which is the revelation of completion in the incomplete. No one of its notes is final, yet each reflects the infinite. What does it matter if we fail to derive the exact meaning of this great harmony? Is it not like the hand meeting the string and drawing out at once all its tones at the touch? It is the language of beauty, the caress, that comes from the heart of the world and straightway reaches our heart. Last night, in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stood alone and heard the voice of the singer of eternal melodies. When I went to sleep I closed my eyes with this last thought in mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the dance of life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body, keeping step wit the stars. The heart will throb, the blood will leap in the veins, and the millions of living atoms of my body will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string that thrills at the touch of the master.

Sometimes it is hard to criticize, one wants only to chronicle. The good and mediocre books come in from week to week, and I put them aside and read them and think of what to say; but the 'worthless' books come in day after day, like the cries and truck sounds from the street, and there is nothing that anyone could think of that is good enough for them. In the bad type of thin pamphlets, in hand-set lines on imported paper, people's hard lives and hopeless ambitions have expressed themselves more directly and heartbreakingly than they have ever expressed in any work of art: it is as if the writers had sent you their ripped-out arms and legs, with 'This is a poem' scrawled on them in lipstick. After a while one is embarrassed not so much for them as for poetry, which is for these poor poets one more of the openings against which everyone in the end beats his brains out; and one finds it unbearable that poetry should be so hard to write - a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey in which there is for most of the players no tail, no donkey, not even a booby prize.

The techniques, though they play an important role in the early stage, should not be too restrictive, complex or mechanical. If we cling to them, we will become bound by their limitation. Remember, you are expressing the technique, and not doing Technique number two, Stance three, Section four?

'I can only say so much about how I feel. Music is what I always turned to when I was feeling a certain way. It's been my reason for everything.'

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

Exuberance is Beauty

Words that weep and tears that speak.

After all, ironic philosophies produce passionate works.

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

I said, 'The years with change advance: If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

You, why do you let me say such things when and where I shouldn't?' 'the problem is not ordering the course of your speech. Its shutting you up in the first place'

Preserving the sweetness of proportion and expressing itself beyond expression.

Rhyme, the rack of finest wits, That expresseth but by fits, True conceit, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Cozening judgement with a measure, But false weight. Wresting words from their true calling; Propping verse, for fear of falling To the ground. Jointing syllables, drowning letters, Fastening vowels, as with fetters They were bound!

I rap lite on I'm Beautiful. I have an excellent sense of time. I was thinking of taking up bass or drums because I like rhythm. The problem is, I have nothing to say. What am I going to rap about? My hairdresser? My nails? Actually, that could be fun.

Some people want to express...apathy with noise and brutality...It's the want to transcend all that, to find some deeper essence in life that drives me.

When I started in music, I thought, 'My job is pretty simple. I search for the human things in myself, and I turn them into notes and words, and then in some fashion, I help people hold on to their own humanity.'

Liberty: 'Creativity is the greatest expression of liberty.'

Fathers: 'I dare not try to express the depths of a father's love, for though I have dedicated much of my life to words and poetry I doubt I could come close to expressing my feelings. I will say that a father's love is often expressed in many different ways.'

Language: 'Language is vastly important to nearly all human progression. Language is a factor that joins nations of people together. It is a common denominator among civilizations of people where in some cases there may be few others but hate. Though through language there may be division, without its powers there would be only division. If a person cannot communicate his ideas effectively to others because of a weakness in language, then how may they understand the concepts of others fully? And even more important, how may one conceive and understand one's own creative thoughts? How can you bring to fruition that which you cannot convert from the abstract?'

He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply 'silent' of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler's effortless, uninterested face.

No other comedian could do as much with the dead-pan. He used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things; a one track mind near the track's end of pure insanity; mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive; an awe-inspiring sort of patience and power to endure, proper to granite but uncanny in flesh and blood.

The older Keaton got, the more one could see eternity in his look.

For me its Buster Keaton's face, with maybe his little hat on... It's being able to look into his eyes and see that sad face.

With his dark, sensitive looks, his face in repose evoking years of quiet contemplation, he resembled a mixture of Buddhist monk and fashion model. He offered the ideal face and acting style for motion pictures, proving less is more. He would become a master of knowing when to do nothing at all.

He was a man who starts at a certain age with all signs showing that he's unable to produce anything of importance. And then, by refusing and refusing things which are offered him, in the end he finds, he sees, as they say; he becomes certain that he's found his own expression. It's a splendid example of a man who, through his refusals, finds his way.

Ethel patted her hair and looked very sneery.

Shit is the tofu of cursing.

You ask if I would have been different without 'Party guidance'? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.

So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed-after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels-to call our 'lives,') let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and 'art' or 'the arts.' Let us not forget that every authentic 'work of art' is in and of itself alive and that, however 'the arts' may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as 'beauty.' This being so, our three ring circus is art-for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of 'beauty' is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is 'childish,' is idiotic.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

He had total love in his eyes when he performed. He was the total androgynous beauty. I would practice Elvis in front of the mirror when I was twelve or thirteen years old.

'I am reminded of a comment made shortly after the death of Elvis Presley by a musician he had worked with. He pointed out that despite an impressive vocal range of two and a half octaves and something approaching perfect pitch, Elvis was perfectly willing to sing off-key when he thought the song required it. Those off-key notes were art.'

'He had a musically textured rhythmic voice that had emotional intelligence; concentrate on his voice: sweet, remorseful, defiant, suggestive'

'Elvis' range was about two and a quarter octaves, as measured by musical notation, but his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all.'

'He treats the song as a private meditation, full of pain and the yearning to believe. Though the lyrics speak of hope, Elvis turns them into a cry, as if reaching for one last sliver of light in engulfing darkness. 'I am alone', he seems to be saying. But maybe, just maybe, we can find someone or something to cling to. In his case, it's God. But each of us, hearing him, reaches for our own salvation; if great art needs nakedness (then), those few minutes of Elvis alone at the piano amount to the most naked performance I've ever witnessed.'

Her poetry is the diary or autobiography - though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth - of an acute psychologist, a wonderful rhetorician, and one of the most individual writers who ever lived, one of those best able to express experience at its most nearly absolute.

It is the Frenchman's readiness to exaggerate that is at the root of his intellectual lucidity and also of his capacity for acknowledging merit. The English were not afraid to exaggerate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they were then not far behind the French in the lucidity of their thinking.... There is hardly a single instance of cultural vigor marked by moderation in expression.

In his countenance this person read an expression of no-encouragement towards his venture.

He [ Titian ] is the least mannered and consequently the most varied of artists. Mannered talents have but one bias, one usage only. They are more apt to follow the impulse of the hand than to control it. Those that are less mannered must be more varied, for they continually respond to genuine emotion.

They say that truth is naked. I cannot admit this for any but abstract truths; in the arts, all truths are produced by methods which show the hand of the artist.

Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music.

Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat! 69 assholes tied in a knot! Hooray! Lizard shit! Fuck!

Civil limitation daunts His utterance never; the nymphs blush, not he.

The ambition of the Irish is to say a thing as everybody says it, only louder.

'It makes blood shoot out of my eyes.'

It taught me that I had a lot more discipline than I thought; a lot more patience. [I became] more expressive, not only personally with my family, but in my music and my way of communicating.

'What an unutterable catastrophe!' The apothecary always had the proper expression ready, whatever the occasion.

Singing is what you do when you want to make a noise but haven't got anything much to say.

I shall not sing a May song. A May song should be gay. I'll wait until November And sing a song of gray.

Art is a fruit that grows in man.