Quotes about Expression

They called me 'the angriest Negro in America.' I wouldn't deny that charge. I spoke exactly as I felt. 'I believe in anger. The Bible says there is a time for anger.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.

What a shame that the mind can command the face to assume whatever look or expression it pleases, but cannot command itself and govern its own thoughts.

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date.

Women, and what went on under their collars. Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country inside their clothes -- mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father's take on things. But men's body temperatures were never dealt with; they were never even mentioned....

She doesn't make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.

At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

I already told you," said Adam. "There is no need to swear." "Sorry, it just fucking slipped out," said Zeb.

I must admit it's a surprise to find myself still here, still talking to you. I prefer to think of it as talking, although of course it isn't: I'm saying nothing, you're hearing nothing. The only thing between us is this black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air.