Quotes about Expression

Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

The difficulty is that I have no mouth through which I can speak. I can't make myself understood, not in your world, the world of bodies, of tongues and fingers; and most of the time I have no listeners, not on your side of the river. Those of you who may catch the odd whisper, the odd squeak, so easily mistake my words for breezes rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight, for bad dreams.

But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.

In this country you can say what you like because no one will listen to you anyway.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

There is a silence. But sometimes it's as dangerous not to speak.

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described

Sex and violence, he thinks now. A lot of the songs were about that. We didn't even notice. We thought it was art.

know what you mean, we'd say. Or, a quaint expression you sometimes hear, still, from older people: I hear where you're coming from, as if the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place. Which it would be, which it is.

I take back what you have stolen, and in your languages I announce I am now nameless. My true name is a growl.

your kiss no longer literature but fine print, a set of instructions.