top of page
.png){kind=small}
Expression Quotes
"A valise without straps. A hole without a key. She had a German mouth, French ears, Russian ass. Cunt international. When the flag waved it was red all the way back to the throat. You entered on the Boulevard Jules-Ferry and came out at the Porte de la Villette. You droppedyour sweetbreads into the tumbrils " red tumbrils with two wheels, naturally. At the confluence of the Ourcq and Marne, where the water sluices through the dikes and lies like glass under thebridges."
18
"In a man's letters his soul lies naked."
18
"This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me."
18
"The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."
18
"Men! Dead or alive, they could be exactly the same."
18
"Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden - maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken."
17
"It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things."
17
"We are only writing the history of our time."
17
"If words are the truth, what is living for?"
17
"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."
17
"And when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakrememberingwe were never meant to survive."
17
"Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless."
17
"Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of experience."
16
"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."
16
"Don't be afraid to talk because in the long run, you will be afraid that you were too silent."
16
"In those days I used to talk to myself as if reciting poetry."
16
"Singing is my pleasure, but not in church, for the parson said the gargoyles must remain on the outside, not seek room in the choir stalls. So I sing inside the mountain of my flesh, and my voice is as slender as a reed and my voice has no lard in it. When I sing the dogs sit quiet and people who pass in the night stop their jabbering and discontent and think of other times, when they were happy. And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are figments of my mind and nowhere I have been. But does it matter if the place cannot be mapped as long as I can still describe it?"
16
"Let your eyes talk, mouth listens and ear sleeps."
16
"Hearing women singing about themselves - rather than men singing about women - makes everything seem wonderfully clear, and possible."
16
"So, show the world, make it seeYou are you, and I am me."
16
"Don't criticize me because of what I write, because for all you know, I could be right!"
16
"When a man talks from the heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry."
16
"Even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone."
16
"Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces."
15
"Feel oddly barren. My sickness is when words draw in their horns and the physical world refuses to be ordered, recreated, arranged and selected. I am a victim of it then, not a master."
15
"Writing with a biro is the emotional equivalent of giving your loved one a plastic rose on Valentine's Day."
15
"How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn't pull the trigger?"
15
"Sometimes a writer simply finds new ways of saying what has already been said because, ultimately, truth is unoriginal."
15
"I let out a sound that was definitely not a whimper. It was something far more manly, no matter what it sounded like."
15
"Everybody pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning."
15
"If you feel it right now, on the Internet, you can tell them right now; you don't have to wait for anything."
15
"There is a weird power in a spoken word."
15
"I want to share in endless ways, My expression of love for you, I'm no longer the beast of burden, Twas lifted when I fell for you."
14
"Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment."
14
"Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance."
14
"There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooooords."
14
"Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder."
14
"I like good strong words that mean something."
14
"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them "€" by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."
14
"Remember:all the thoughts you have of yourself and others are written on your face. Make them kind."
14
"Don't leave it all unsaid, somewhere in the wasteland of your head."
14
"His voice is like a thunderstorm, and his hands know every secret hidden deep beneath the cool, dark earth."
14
"Her voice was caught in the shell of my ear, as if it were the ocean."
14
"Reading poetry is like undressing before a bath. You don't undress out of fear that your clothes will become wet. You undress because you want the water to touch you. You want to completely immerse yourself in the feeling of the water and to emerge anew."
14
"Don't allow anyone to hold you back from expressing your feelings. Maybe you just can't stand a chance of losing some friends, but if you must be truly you, you must be you! Nothing else!"
14
"How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described."
14
bottom of page