Expression Limitation Quotes

All language is but a poor translation.

The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.

Words are useless, especially sentences.

Remember: whatsoever I am saying is not the thing that I want to say to you. Whatsoever I am saying has nothing to do with truth, because truth cannot be said. Whatsoever I am saying is nothing but a hammering. If you become awake, you will see the truth.

I have drawn from the well of language many a thought which I do not have and which I could not put into words.

Language cannot say everything, fortunately.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

To have a specific style is to be poor in speech.

In the greatest art, one is always aware of things that cannot be said. . .of the contradiction between expression and the presence of the inexpressible. Stylistic devices are also techniques of avoidance. The most potent elements of a work of art are, often, its silences.

What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.

Today, I don't even think that people like [James Baldwin] are possible. He would not have that much room.

Speech happens to not be his language.

Most rats read. Our frustration is, we cannot hold a pen to write.

If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as "spiritual life," "God," "soul," "cross," etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music's got these bars and measures you know.

As vocabulary is reduced , so are the number of feelings you can express, the number of events you can describe, the number of the things you can identify! Not only understanding is limited, but also experience. Man grows by language. Whenever he limits language he retrogresses!

very young people are true but not resounding instruments.

Well, one thing, you got to stand in a courtroom and listen to a judge sentencing you to 25 years in prison before you realize that freedom of expression can no longer be taken for granted.

It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.

But words - words are not enough!

If you can't pronounce a word correctly, just don't use it.

I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.

When you used to be able to express yourself as an adult in your own language, or as I can do in English, for instance, it's sometimes hard to switch back to very simple talking, like I am forced to do in Finnish. So a real conversation, when I really wanna tell something, I can't do it in Finnish.

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.