Clarice Lispector Quotes

There's no better way to process pain than to write.

The act of writing can be a form of release - a confession performs the same action: putting your inner life on the page or into the hands of a trusted person releases tensions and sheds light on what often seems hidden until spoken - or written.

By writing I can live in ways that I could not survive.

I do these records. All of these ideas that I have, that I put out there, that inspire me to write, are a purging in a lot of ways. I have to expel them in order for myself to walk around and actually smile and be a regular, or a living, person.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

I write to give myself strength.

The great thing about writing is that...you can do all these antisocial things and you get paid for them and nobody ever arrests you because they're all make-believe. Then that way if you were actually ever driven to do any of those things, the pressure's off because you'd have already written them down. It's therapy.

I tend to write it and then let go emotionally.

I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.

When I have worries, fears or a love affair, I have the luck of being able to transform it into a poem.

I feel I'm able to get rid of any demons lurking in my psyche through my writing, which leaves me free to create all of this and to enjoy our family life, stepping away from all the fictional traumas and the dramas. If I write about family in crisis, then I won't have to live through it, I guess.

Generally, all my life, I have had strong friction with life - I was a problematic soldier, I was kicked out of the army, I was in fights. There was something about writing that was a way of experimenting with this emotion.

I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it.

Writing helps me process things that are happening to me.

One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.

Writing has become such an outlet for me that when I don't have it, I just get pent up.

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

I was going mad. One day, I just started writing, and it was like therapy because I was in a position where I couldn't rage. I never expected to be a writer; it's a different world than I ever expected to be in.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry.

It's very special that I can go through things - and write them down and record them - and so many people can relate. Not everybody can get out who they are and really feel better after they write.

I don't really write for catharsis; I get that kind of work done in therapy.

I wasn't trying to write a book; it wasn't even in my vision. I was posting stuff online just because it made me feel relieved - as a way of getting things off my chest.

My only way of processing anything for me is by writing.

As a youngster when I started writing and stuff, I did actually write more from other people's perspectives. When I hit 18 and something happened to me that hurt me, I discovered that writing the truth is really therapeutic and amazing. Every single one of my songs is about something very personal to me and I could tell anyone what it's about, each song. Like a diary, basically.