Ruth Rendell Quotes

It's absolutely essential to my life. I don't know what I would do if I didn't write.

If I went for too long without writing, I would start to feel like something inside me was dying.

I feel like if I couldn't write, I would explode.

I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

Writing isn't a job so much as a compulsion. I've been writing since I was very young because for some strange reason, I must write, and also because when I write, I feel more alive and closer to the world than when I'm not writing.

If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die.

I'm very unhappy when I'm not writing.

I always wrote. I wrote from when I was 12. That was therapeutic for me in those days. I wrote things to get them out of feeling them, and onto paper. So writing in a way saved me, kept me company. I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn't know.

When I was young, I would just write poems into textbooks in class. Everybody needs that outlet. For me, I think it's less about learning about myself and more about just needing to get things out sometimes.

Art was - and is - my biggest outlet. I'd probably die if I didn't do it.

I can't not write, if I don't then I get really depressed.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing.

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

I started writing to save my life.

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

I always wrote poetry as a teenager and it was always so dark, but it made me feel good to get it out.

Music was my one way to vent.

My music is my way to rearrange the world according to my own hopes.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

Writing is my salvation. If I didn't write, what would I do?

If I'm feeling something, I have a lot of different ways to express it, you know? I can write an article about it. I can write a screenplay about it. I can act in someone's thing.

I don't have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapist is in my paint brushes.

I love writing. I feel more connected to that than I do a lot of the other things.

Songwriting is like a therapy, it's a connection that you have with another person, and I'm not scared of it at all for some reason.