Quotes About Self-expression

What I have tried to do in my own life is refuse the language and categories that would reduce me to less than my whole complicated experience

I say, "Talk to me. Tell me who you are, what you want, what you've never had, the story you've always been afraid to tell.

I don't object to being called by my Christian name, on purely social occasions. The Russian version was Frangike. Rather scented, I thought. Or alternatively, like a new brand of onion.

I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.

Of course I talk to myself. I like a good speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.

If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again, If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much, But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn…

They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.

She dreamed by day of never again putting on tight shoes, of never having to laugh and listen and admire, of never more being a good sport. Never.

Apart from being extremely good-looking in a blondish, willowyish kind of way, she was dressed well in an "I don't care what I wear, just any old thing that's lying around" kind of way that relies on being extremely careful about what you leave lying around.

You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.

Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.

I broke out into a sweat and the worlds of Rilke, the poet, entered my brain -- his notion that we are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.

In Lake's experience, even eccentric and unconventional people carefully curated their persona. Very few truly didn't give a goddamn what others thought.

But I knew even then that I did not want my sons to act for me in the world, any more than I wished for them to kill or die for their country. I wanted to act, to live, in myself and to love them for their separate selves.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

He who is unable to dance says that the yard is stony

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself everyday.

No human being should learn from another. Each individual should develop his own powers to the uttermost, not try to imitate those of someone else. I do not wish you to be a second and inferior Poirot. I wish you to be the supreme Hastings. And you are the supreme Hastings. In you, Hastings, I find the normal mind almost perfectly illustrated.

Dance in the body you have.

How wonderful to simply do things instead of wondering if they are worth doing or discussing whether to do them or being told not to do them or listening to somebody else describe doing them.

To deny expression is a form of lying and a mode of suicide.

Self-expression through activity (not only inward but also, and especially, outward) is the natural perfection, the flowering of being.

Once undressed I felt less exposed. (...) Naked was my uniform. (...) There was no pressure to conform.

Anybody who cares less about wanting to be cool, I think, is more interesting.