I’ve been programming in javascript for a few years now. Lately I found a way to articulate something that I’ve been experiencing for some time: using expressions makes your code flow, whereas when you use a statement the whole code flow stops and you need to restart it.
The distinction between expresssions and statements is a tricky one. The standard distinction is that an expression produces a value, while a statement produces a side effect.
I’d like to propose a different, more heuristic definition: an expression is anything that you can stick into a data structure. A statement is anything that you cannot stick into a data structure. 
Even more prosaically: an expression is anything you can stick into an array.
This definition is arbitrary and yet quite useful. Judging by it, here’s the things that are expressions:

• Literals (numbers, strings, regexes, arrays, objects).
• Named functions that are already defined.
• Lambdas.
• Function invocations.
• Ternaries.
• Increments and decrements.
• Bit operations.
• Logical and mathematical operations.
• Comparisons.
• String concatenation.

And here’s the things that are statements:

• If/else blocks.
• Variable assignments.
• Named function definitions.
• Try/catch blocks.
• Return statements.
• Errors and exceptions.

I am definitely not ready to explain why expressions are much better than statements as a way of creating elegant, precise, compact code. However, I am quite sure that the more I use expressions, and the less I use statements, the better my code becomes.
It is noteworthy that judging by this heuristic, ternaries and increment/decrement, which are two seemingly un-functional, side effect laden constructs, can work as expressions.