John Edgar Wideman Quotes

My demons, inner strengths and physical battles have guided me through life.

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

I don't think balance is something you get from someone else; it's something women have to find from within. For me, finding balance is still a work in progress.

I feel like my music at least allows me to release the other side of me, a more vulnerable and sensitive side.

Recovery is an ongoing project that is really discrete from everything else in my life. It allows me to be an agent, allows me to write, allows me to be married, allows me to be part of a family. The writing is not a support beam of recovery but a happy consequence of it.

Yes, doing a work, telling a story very much represents a way to save my own life, and on so many levels.

Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose.

I went into acting as psychotherapy, and it's still a work in progress.

I am pleased to say that I am not a tortured comedian - I laugh a lot. My twenties weren't particularly happy, but it's the same for a lot of people. In your thirties, you realise that your life and your worries are really insignificant, and you have to force yourself to be more positive and take each day as a gift.

People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of their body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships - not only with each other, but with life and the ecosystem.

You don't need the iPhone: you have the most exquisite apparatus in the known universe sitting right in your head - the most complex organization of matter in the entire universe. And here are we, feeling a little depressed, feeling like we're not getting where we need to be, when really you might be exactly where you need to be.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

My 20s was a time for self-exploration and, okay, a little self-indulgence.

Many of us feel stress and get overwhelmed not because we're taking on too much, but because we're taking on too little of what really strengthens us.

My own path towards wellness has been a long and dynamic one. It's taught me that healing from the inside out takes time and there can be great value in various sources of guidance.

I know how I want to operate as an artist. And that is by having an honest, genuine dialogue about this kind of screwed up journey I've had that I'm so thankful for.

It only seems that there is something more important for you to do than to just quietly be yourself.

The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

You feel different every day of your life. You just have to create your own space to survive, personally and professionally.

Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.

In the early 2000s, I was going through a lot. I didn't have my head screwed on right. Where I was at as a man, I was still growing up.

Art is for healing ourselves, and everybody needs their own personal art to heal up their problems.

When I was younger, I thought I was too young to really be personal. I thought that what I was feeling and thinking might be half-baked.