#expression

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#self-expression #beauty

There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything. ↗

— Twyla Tharp

#called #destroys #expression #good #kind

No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. ↗

— John Ruskin

#effort #expression #imperfection #judgment #mercy

A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them. ↗

— Criss Jami

#articulation #communication #controversy #disapproval #emotions

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language. ↗

— James Thurber

#decline #english #english language #expression #fact

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics. ↗

— Jane Addams

#ethics #expression #indeed #medium #sole

Change is happening and old structures are falling in the form of a "Death of a Thousand Cuts." In other words one grand act is not occuring but a multitude of small expressions on the part of individuals, both slowly and swiftly taking the place of heirarchy and history. ↗

— William Gibson

#end-of-hierarchy #expression #change

Emily looked into his eyes. They were blank, unreadable. That was the worst kind of person, the scariest—the one who’d learned to keep his feelings out of his eyes. Or who didn’t feel anything at all. Emily had known people like that; they were the destroyers. They took things—everything you worked for, all your silly dreams—and smashed them beneath their boots for no reason at all. ↗

— Lisa Unger

#eyes-the-true-expression #dreams

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#writing #experience

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. ↗

— John Coltrane

#humanity #music #soul #faith