James Ransone Quotes

I think poetry was always where I went to deal with my deepest feelings.

I want people to feel the times where they don't feel good. You should dive into those emotions, because that's what I do with my music.

Most artists - painters or writers - I think create out of stress or negative situations. Look at rock music. It's about getting things off of your chest, and it's a means of venting in many ways. That's what my work is about.

When I write sad songs, I feel like I'm sewing up a scar in me, and the outcome always feels so much better than when I write happy ones.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

I have never been depressed or thrown a plate, which I attribute to the cathartic effects of writing books about people whose lives are more grueling than mine.

Instead of slashing my wrists, I just write a bunch of really crummy songs.

I'm lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That's an enormous privilege. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.

I have always been fascinated by dark and mysterious stuff. I guess I have a pretty dark and gloomy side. Writing songs saves me from going completely gonzo.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.

I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.

Mostly singing was cathartic, writing was cathartic, therapeutic. I don't think I had a goal, particularly, to sing or put it out there for anybody.

I only ever really take out my guitar when I'm miserable, which isn't necessarily a very good time to do it.

I write plays not to make money, but to stop myself from going mad. Because it's my way of making the world rational to me.

It was difficult for me to feel my feelings, so I just buried them. Then I found that acting was a way for me to get them out. But now that I'm a reasonably sane adult, acting is more about my trying to engage other people: Acting is cathartic for the viewer as well.

These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that.

I didn't never have to go to a therapist. I just always put it in a song and you heard me.

I just feel very lucky to be able to write fiction because I think, otherwise, I would have had to spend a fortune on a psychiatrist - and I still wouldn't get 1/100th of what I get writing fiction.

My songwriting... it's almost like a kind of self-therapy.

I find it easier to write about stuff that is frustrating.

You know early on when you're given a gift that can keep you sane. That's what acting does for me. It keeps me honest and keeps me sane.

It's not necessarily bad that you have angst or you have anger - it's what you do with it, how you interpret it into something profoundly moving.

Mandy' came from grief and depression. I wanted this to be an outward volcanic expulsion of the emotion of my first film.

If I'm kind of sad or depressed, it doesn't necessarily help me to write a song about exactly what I'm depressed about.

Sometimes I have some stuff in my head, man, you wouldn't believe. But I can go to the studio and talk about it. That's my way of releasing.