Glen Hansard Quotes

Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative, you can get beyond your pain or negativity.

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.

I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that's how the album came out so dark.

I've always been one of those people that, if I am angry, I just hold it in. And I always kind of, like, wrote it in a song and put it aside for myself because it helps me get it out. It's almost like exercising; it's almost like that for me.

Yes, there are times when I get extremely depressed and how I sublimate those feelings is through music.

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.

It's not like I force myself to think of sad things, but... it's more that I make music because it makes me happy.

I feel like music is sort of therapy for myself.

There's this whole idea that you've got the blues and you're going to write. Bullshit. When I feel really bad, all I want to do is sit in front of the TV with the remote control and check out.

Each time I seem to go through one of life's huge things, I want to play music.

I don't need therapy. I'm not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.

I still will sit down at the piano and play when I am wrestling with something emotionally or just want to move into the musical world.

I love pouring my heart out. People don't want to hear you whine when you're with friends, so you can sing about it instead - it's the best outlet.

The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me.

When I'm having a bad day, I pick up my guitar.

Everything I was feeling, all the hurt and the pain and the emotion I was going through, I put into my music.

Music is a very powerful thing. If I'm angry, I can write a song about it, and it seems to make everything okay.

I cry all the time. Music makes me cry.

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

When I first started making music, it was where I went when I couldn't express myself, when I wasn't able to connect with other people, when I couldn't talk about what I was going through.

We all need ways of processing things. I think I was called to music because it was this thing that was always there for me that I could pour my heart into safely.

Looking back on it, now I can identify the points in my life when I wasn't playing, and music - and didn't have that outlet - those were the points when I was most unguided and self destructive because I didn't have that channel to get those energies out. I'm a much healthier person when I play music.

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.

I've used songwriting as a tool, I've used it as a way of being able to talk about how I feel.