Ellen Bass Quotes

For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put (the song) 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore.

If I wanted to curse you out, I would write everything I wanted to say to you in my diary, and it was like screaming in my head. After that, I would have no feelings for you; I wouldn't be mad at you or upset because I already said it to you when I wrote it down. That's what writing did for me.

The weight is off my shoulders. I don't live in the past anymore. I look forward, instead of back.

Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver...to release you from something that will eat you alive; that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly. Do you think this man cares about the pain and torment you have gone through? If anything, he feeds on that knowledge. Don't you want to cut that off? And in doing so, you'll release him from a burden that he carries whether he knows it or not--acknowledges it or not.

I have always preferred to keep things to myself rather than sharing them with anyone, but I am learning that if you let it go, you feel better for it. Don't keep it all bottled up inside; don't take it all on alone.

Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.

Somehow, it seems that the sadder a song is, the happier I feel. The release of emotions that many would label as 'negative' is actually a liberating process for me.

I guess writing is a kind of therapy in the sense that there are things you need to say and you say them, and better out than in.

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

I think I write songs because of pent-up feelings.

I dance. A lot. I work grief and sadness out of my body when I dance, and I bring in joy and rhythm.

Ain't nothing like a good cry.

When I was younger, I used to say, 'I'm not making music. I am getting catharsis for emotion.' For me, vulnerability is an act of uncovering. It's a revealing: the idea of putting aside your armour and allowing pain to enter.

To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.

Now I'm free of him and I'm light as a feather. There's no weight holding me down; I'm ready to spread my wings and fly.

Sometimes, you know, I cry. And sometimes I scream. And I get really angry. And I get really upset, you know, into wallowing in self-pity sometimes. And I think that it's all part of the healing.

Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future.

The freedom of saying anything to him, telling all, relieved a burden I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying. In my relentless push to keep moving forward, there had been so many emotions I hadn't let myself inhabit fully, so many things I hadn't talked about. Now I couldn't quite catch up to myself.

You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of. Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile.

Some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour- until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

To experience emotional freedom, we must accept, surrender, and let go of our wounds. We must be willing to take responsibility for what we're holding on to, which is usually a hurt or pain from the past that leaves us feeling victimized.