#Self Expression Quotes

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

“Every man should let out all the length of all the reigns; should find or make a frank and healthy expression of what force and meaning is in him.”

“A man's style is his mind's voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.”

“No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.”

“To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest.Always do what you are afraid to do.”

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”

“Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the intimated purpose, express character.”

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

“He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public, which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity.”

“Let yourself become living poetry.”

“Speak your latent conviction. . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

“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 love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.”

“Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.”

“I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than self-denial.”

“Writing isn't something I do, writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.”

“What comes out of your mouth is determined by what goes into your mind.”

“The two terrors that discourage creativity and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one's own consistency.”

“My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.”

“One can usually put one's thoughts better in one's own words.”

“Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

“He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public.”

“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 always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn't something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.”

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.”

“I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.”

“O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.”

“What is a woman? I assure you, I do not know ... I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.”

“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?”

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

“I am too not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

“Style is such a personal thing; it's your way to be an individual.”

“I don't live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.”

“All of my songs are autobiographical.”

“Keeping your emotions all locked up is something that’s unfair to you. When you clearly know how you feel. You should say it.”

“I don't want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who I am, this is what I do, I say what's on my mind.”

“One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me.... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.”

“I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.”

“Everything that happens to me gets put into a song. For some reason, I'm really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs. There, I don't hold back: names, dates, times, expressions on people's faces, exactly where we were and how it felt, what I wish I would have said to them in the moment. So I'm not only excited about sharing the songs with fans; I'm also pretty interested to hear the response from the guys I've written about on the record.”

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

“Accept your genius and say what you think.”

“I slipped myself some pink Xannies/And danced around the house in all-over print panties.”

“I try to tell all the - not even the kids, even people older than me - to just be themselves. Don't wear what I wear 'cause I wear it; wear what you like.”

“People talk to me a lot about, "Why don't you ever rebel?" And I feel like I do rebel. To me, rebelling is - is that rush you get when you sing a song about someone and you know they're in the crowd.”

“I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.”

“I've never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I've only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.”

“Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.”

“We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.”