Quotes about Expression

If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.

Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein.

If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, old Uncle Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.

So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer - please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.

Goodness and courage are how the divine presents itself so often—whether in drag, as close friends, or as EMTs.

While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writers, who tend to be shy, get to stay home and still be public. There are many obvious advantages to this. You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.

If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days—listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold.

Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.

I'm not suggesting that you want to be an author who tells a story in order to teach a moral or deliver a message. If you have a message, as Samuel Goldwyn said, send a telegram.

You wouldn't be a writer if reading hadn't enriched your soul more than other pursuits.

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.

Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won't do any of those things; you'll never get in that way.