Jayne Anne Phillips Quotes

Poetry is really about your mental state or intellectual, and where you are, and you're trying to evoke that, explain it to yourself, whatever, you're trying to dig into it, analyse yourself.

I've always relied a lot on landscape in my books, the atmosphere of a particular place, as well as a fair amount of external action. While writing 'Chance,' it occurred to me that this is the most internal book I've ever written. So much of the action takes place in Chance's head.

Whenever you're writing something that's reflective, you have to put yourself through some sort of ordeal just to understand the way you're feeling.

One of the aspects I like about the film is that there is a kind of emotional, psychological discussion during the storytelling, ... Before taking a drug, go through yourself, experience yourself, all your hopes and fears in your own time. Before the pharmacology, do the psychology.

Rather than going after our walls and barriers with a sledgehammer, we pay attention to them. With gentleness and honesty, we move closer to those walls. We touch them and smell them and get to know them well. We begin a process of acknowledging our aversions and our cravings. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to build the walls: What are the stories I tell myself? What repels me and what attracts me? We start to get curious about what’s going on.

A writer needs a life of introspection.

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Filmmaking is incredible introspective. It forces you to sort of examine yourself in new ways.

All good writing comes out of aloneness.

To me, directing movies is just that. It's a need to question myself and set the things that disturb me on the table.

Joni Mitchell's someone who has tried to make sense of her own world, sometimes painfully, through song.

A lot of my songs are just posing questions, because I'm on a journey to find the answers myself.

Me writing 'Black Rainbow' was me alone in a windowless room going insane.

I've really taken time to dive into my heart and my emotions a little more. I think, before, I was a little nervous to open up that box and go, 'What's in there,' you know? Now, that's what's made the best music, and that's what I've been able to pull out of parts of myself that I never knew existed.

There is within every human being a deep well of thinking over which a heavy iron lid is kept clamped.

Man has made remarkable strides in conquering outer space, but how futile have been his efforts in conquering inner space- the space in our hearts and minds of men.

I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.

Perhaps the longest journey is the journey within.

One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.

Having children made me go down a road of serious introspection and self-examination. I think it's informed and hopefully enhanced my creativity.

When I write, I solemnly visit myself.

For me, I'm constantly writing stuff that is what I'm dealing with on a personal, psychological level. And I think that I bring that to whatever I'm doing, whether it's being an actor or a writer or whatever it is I'm doing. I think you can't help but do that.