In my JLPT textbook, they have this sentence:
自分{じぶん}のない者{もの}に表現{ひょうげん}もへったくれもない。
The book provides a translation, which is this:
You can't talk about expression if you have none (of your own ideas).
(The "of your own ideas" part is built on the context from the previous paragraph.)
I'm having trouble seeing how we get to that translation, partly because I'm not sure about the use of へったくれもない. According to my dictionary, へったくれ is an expression meaning "to be damned", as in, "to heck with it". So I would understand the sentence if it just ended there, but there's a もない as well, which would seem to reverse that, meaning, in my mind, that you can't discount self expression from someone without ideas.
Or maybe I'm not parsing it right, and it's not へったくれ, but the へる is something else, like 減る.
I don't know. It just confuses me. How do the parts of the sentence combine to end up with the translation given?
