Derrick Jensen Quotes

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak.

Speech is one symptom of affection; and silence one; the perfect communication is heard of none.

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.

Music is the language of the heart without words.

Words can be deceitful, but pantomime necessarily is simple, clear and direct

The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language.

By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.

There are all kinds of symbols. Verbal language is only one. Sometimes by opening our mouths, we make dreadful errors. It's often so much nicer just to look at somebody and vibrate.

The thing that started me painting originally was seeing Bambi when I was about nine. I was incredibly disturbed by the forest fire that killed Bambi's mother, and that distress gave me the impulse to create something, as a way of dealing with it.

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

A lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

Sexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ourselves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy.

None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.

When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.

Dance is the pure language of the soul - it's been with us from the very beginning.

You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.

A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.