Quotes about Expression

I am tied down with single words. But you wander off; you slip away; you rise up higher, with words and words in phrases.

Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue.

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

My head is a hive of words that won't settle.

Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself-Oh, yes!-in every other way.

It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?

Freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art.

But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.

I like reading my own writing. It seems to fit me closer than it did before.

To speak or to be silent was equally an effort, for when they were silent they were keenly conscious of each other's presence, and yet words were either too trivial or too large.

Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination.