Caroline Leavitt Quotes

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.

Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back. And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.

I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.

What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside me.

The biggest disabilities are when you sabotage yourself mentally, those personal demons that get on your shoulder and you can't shake 'em.

At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies.

Our most merciless enemy is our past.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

every heart has its graveyard.

Because every one of us has our box, a dark chamber stowing the thing that lanced our heart. It contains what you do everything for, strive for, wound everything around you.

An inner darkness is darker than an outer darkness.

But maybe you carried your demons with you everywhere, the way you carried your shadow.

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

Well everybody's got a secret, son, something that they just can't face. Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it, they carry it with them every step that they take Till some day they just cut it loose, cut it loose or let it drag 'em down Where no one asks any questions or looks too long in your face In the darkness on the edge of town.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

Write about the thing that frightens you most.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

I also write plays, so I understand the writers mind, and how obsessed you can get writing.

Look at Picasso. O’Neill. Tennessee Williams. Capote. Were these shiny happy people spreading sunshine? No. Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work.

I don't do anything for Halloween. I carry Halloween inside of me.

You don’t just go to somebody and say, ‘I’m a better person because you’re in my head.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? - Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

Write what haunts you. What keeps you up at night. What you are unable to get out of your mind. Sometimes they are the hardest things to write, but those are often the things that are worth investigating by you specifically. . .

Much of my writing is energized by unresolved memories - something like ghosts in the psychological sense.