“The Negro writer is prolific in detail. Situation follows situation in rapid success, demanding close attention to keep clear of the meshes of involvement.”

Observing the richness and density of African American literary expression. · Essay, The Negro as a Writer

• Expression
• Style
• Writing

“The artist is no more (and no less) than a human being who has found a way to say what he cannot not say.”

On the compulsion of artistic expression · Lecture, i: six nonlectures

• Art
• Creativity
• Expression

“The poet is a creator, not an iconoclast, and never will tamely endeavor to say in prose what can only be expressed in song.”

Poetry as making, not as a substitute for argument · Critical essay

• Creation
• Expression
• Poetry

“Poetry is not the thing itself, but the expression of the thing.”

Distinguishing artistic expression from the experience or reality that inspires it. · Essay on poetry

• Art
• Expression
• Poetry

“The natural and outspoken expression of your anguish meets with my deepest sympathy.”

Rejecting emotional restraint in favour of honest expression of grief · Letter on religious teachings and bereavement

• Compassion
• Expression
• Grief

“My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.”

On secrecy as the condition of his inner life finding words · Letter to Catherine Janvier

• Expression
• Secrecy
• Self

“I wrote silences, nights; I noted the inexpressible. I fixed vertigos.”

Original: J’écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l’inexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges. — The poet describes an attempt to give lasting form to experiences that ordinarily resist language. · A Season in Hell, Alchemy of the Word, 1873 (French)

• Expression
• Silence
• Writing

“There is no deeper desire than the Desire of being revealed. We all want the little light in us be Taken from under the bushel.”

The hunger to be known rather than hidden · Letter to Mary Haskell, 10 November 1911

• Desire
• Expression
• Self

“It is rich in humour, strong in raillery and hyperbole, and altogether as fit a vehicle of rustic feeling and thought, as the Doric is found in the Idyllia of Theocritus.”

Celebrating dialect as an expressive literary medium suited to rural life · A Dissertation on the Dorset Dialect of the English Language

• Expression
• Humour
• Language

“The most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.”

Reflecting on the inevitable gap between an artist's inspiration and its expression. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Creativity
• Expression
• Poetry

“The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.”

Clarity as the art of making the unseen self-evident · Sand and Foam, 1926

• Clarity
• Expression
• Perception

“He only fails who has nothing to say.”

Defining failure in creative work as having nothing meaningful to communicate · A Woman of the World

• Expression
• Failure
• Writing

“My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.”

Treats verse as the outlet for an inner music rather than a public programme · Collected prose, My Soul's High Song

• Expression
• Music
• Poetry

“I must express myself, but always completely incomplete.”

Expression is never finished; imperfection is inherent · Letter to Harriet Monroe, 14 October 1913

• Expression
• Imperfection
• Writing

“Self-expression itself, however, is not enough. There must be a movement forward and upward.”

Free utterance still needs direction and growth · Educational writing, as quoted in notices of his work

• Education
• Expression
• Growth

“Regarding the style you speak of adopting, let your feeling come first, your style of expressing that feeling second. Say nothing merely to exhibit your style.”

Her preference for sincere feeling and substance over stylistic display · A Woman of the World, advice to a young writer

• Expression
• Sincerity
• Writing

“I have this moment when, almost in despair, I throw myself at the paper, wanting to cast handfuls of my soul upon people and transform them into myself.”

Original: a mam tę chwilę, że niby z jakąś rozpaczą rzucam się do papieru, chcąc garściami duszę moją rzucać na ludzi, przemieniać ich w siebie — Writing becomes an almost physical act of pouring the self into other people. · Letter to his mother, 28 November 1843 (Polish)

• Creation
• Expression
• Writing

“The writer must be skillful, then, to write uncompromisingly and yet not be of the impudent.”

Reflecting on the delicate balance between forceful expression and the constraints imposed by racial prejudice. · Essay, The Negro as a Writer

• Courage
• Expression
• Writing

“Silent gratitude means little to anyone.”

Encouraging open expression of appreciation toward others · Written observation

• Communication
• Expression
• Gratitude

“The expression of a feeling is always absurd.”

Original: L'expression d'un sentiment est toujours absurde. — Valéry highlights the difficulty of translating inner feeling into adequate external language. · Monsieur Teste (French)

• Expression
• Feeling
• Language

“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn't.”

On the craft and difficulty of poetry · Letter to a high school newspaper, October 26, 1955

• Effort
• Expression
• Poetry

“For I am so intensely subjective as a poet that I was not aware, at the moment of writing, that I was transformed into a medium of mass sentiment.”

On discovering that a personal sonnet had become a public anthem · Autobiography, A Long Way from Home, 1937

• Expression
• Poetry
• Poets

“The one who feels seizes an idea, clothes it in a form, casts it into the realm of knowledge, and passes on.”

Original: El que la siente se apodera de una idea, la envuelve en una forma, la arroja en el estadio del saber y pasa. — The poet transforms an inward perception into artistic form without claiming to explain it completely. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Creation
• Expression
• Poetry

“I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, of course, are more important.”

Her belief in the imaginative audience beyond familiar circles · Essay, Lectures in America

• Expression
• Readers
• Writing