Louise Erdrich Quotes

When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it probably means you need to write it.

I do think that just about whenever I am writing, or more accurately, whenever I have written, I feel better and more at peace as a human being. That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that the literary product is any good.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.

There's no better way to process pain than to write.

Writing helps me process things that are happening to me.

I used to love writing in my journal.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

I find it very satisfying to write because you can purge many things and vent what you feel under the mask of fiction.

As a youngster, when I started writing and stuff, I did actually write more from other people's perspectives. When I hit 18 and something happened to me that hurt me, I discovered that writing the truth is really therapeutic and amazing.

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

Honestly, the choice is: I can be a cheerful person, more awake to correction, more of a force for good ... when I'm writing. Or I can be the opposite of all those things, when I'm not writing.

Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

Most of the time, writing is a lot of fun, and not a small amount of self-medication.

You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

I couldn't even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn't let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn't stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

At this point in my life, I'm probably not gonna be able to stop writing because it's gonna help me be able to do what I need to do.

Writing is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time. The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and writing some more can help you control issues that you face.

I write to give myself strength.

We also write to heighten our own awareness of life... We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely... When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking... I feel I lose my fire and my color.

The great thing about writing is that...you can do all these antisocial things and you get paid for them and nobody ever arrests you because they're all make-believe. Then that way if you were actually ever driven to do any of those things, the pressure's off because you'd have already written them down. It's therapy.

we should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. we should write because writing is good for the soul. we should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

I need to write to be happy.