Self Expression Quotes

Whatever everyone else has asked you to do or never let you do, and let's do that.

Nothing will stop me, and whether I'm here or wherever I may be, I'll always have the same feelings, I'll say what I feel.

Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life.

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

Perhaps I have written fiction because everything unambiguously expressed seems somehow crass to me; and when the subject is myself, I want to jeer and weep.

I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It’s not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.

We must every one be a man of his own fancy.

It is modest of the nightingale not to require anyone to listen to it; but it is also proud of the nightingale not to care whether any one listens to it or not.

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out.

Here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my talent, as the chief of my time is spent in conversation.

There is only one type of story in the world-your story.

I feel fortunate that I've had a lot of songs recorded by other people, because I take my songwriting very seriously. It's only those people that have followed me over the years and really know my work that know how serious I am about all of it - including the way I look. You can't take my high heels from me, you can't have my long fingernails, you can't take all this hair from me, because it's part of this thing that I've become. I wouldn't want to give any of it up. Do I have to be ugly to be a songwriter? This is the way I am, and it's what I choose to be.

I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally… perhaps even spiritually. There’s something, which impels us to show our inner-souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

Expect a most agreeable letter; for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say) I shall have no check to my Genius from beginning to end.

I'm not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

You cannot rise about your words. A lot of people use foul, pornographic, filthy, language and you SEE, all of those words paint pictures and they reveal the internal thinking of the person on the inside. YOU cannot RISE (forward, onward upward) above your words.

The person I am in the company of my sisters has been entirely different from the person I am in the company of other people. Fearless, powerful, surprising, moved as I otherwise am only when I write.

I have no modesty. Modesty is a learned affectation. It's like decal stuck up on a person.

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

The world may know my words, but it has no such privileges with my heart

The best art is about individualism, free self-expression and realising a unique, imaginative perspective- A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent.

Wear it Like a banner For the proud? Not like a shroud.

Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.

I'm so lucky that my songs are basically my diary put to music.

I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool, to weep is to risk appearing too sentimental, to reach out for another is to risk involvement, and to expose feelings is to risk exposing one's true self.

The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.

Music is reflection of self.

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme.

A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or in that of ideas and imagination, or in the realm of intuitions and duty.

It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phoney things. Blinded by it. Or I can show some really fancy movement. But to experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that is very hard to do.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?

It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact.

To get the stuff out of you, especially if what you're dealing with is yourself, requires you to open up and touch tender spots. You have to be anesthetized a little bit.

I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me. I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear; my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself.

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

I just do what I feel and what I like. I don't necessarily censor or feel an obligation to have a particular moral standard - I'm willing to wallow in the mud, if necessary. It appears as if there seems to be a consistency in result, but maybe that has as much to do with the roles I choose as it does with how I play them. I do what pleases me.

The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.

Do your thing, and I shall know you.

The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn't saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more, it was just too much for me.

Let's not talk about it any more, but if you still want anything please write to me about it, because I can say what I mean much better on paper.

Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion.

A lot of people have said I'd have probably done better in my career if I hadn't looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn't be blamed because you want to look pretty.

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.

All of my songs are autobiographical.

I think that when you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying attention to you.

Of nothing but me I sing, lacking another song.

Freedom, individualism and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.

The person who is most a part of me is the performer, is the standup, the guy who says, "Hey look at me, listen to this!" I do that because that's what I do, I love doing it.

It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky..but to express oneself honestly not lying to oneself, now that my friend is very hard to do