Xavier Dolan Quotes

If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

I initially felt shy about doing painting because I wasn't a professional painter. I almost felt like I didn't deserve to paint. But I have gradually adopted a different kind of attitude about this.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.

You can't sit around and wait for somebody to say who you are. You need to write it and paint it and do it

If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing - it doesn't matter. As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning.

As my kid gets a little bit older, if I feel like I have a little bit more time on my hands, I'd like to get more into developing ideas and writing things.

I enjoy so many different art forms; I don't just want to focus on acting. I love music. I love writing stories. And you need solitude to figure out your next step.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this.

I believe in the healing power of the arts, and whenever anyone can bring art into anyone's life, it's a special thing.

Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence.

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.

I write to express my thoughts, my feelings. I want people to think.

Writing songs helped me figure out how to communicate with other people. I finally figured out that if I could express something in a song, I could probably express it in my real life, too.

My father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet, so I had one right inside the house. And on long trips, he'd tell me, if I got bored in the car, to write a poem about it. And I did find that poetry was a way for me, I think as it for a lot of people, to articulate those things that seem hardest to say.

A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

You could take away the singing, and I am fine. But don't take away my gift of writing. It is the best way I can relate and express what I am feeling and what I am going through.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.

Writing and drawing comics for the sheer joy of it - that's true bliss.

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