Richard Simmons Quotes

I think depression creates in me an urgent need to write, but I also believe that daily stress, and even the positive 'stress' of intense happiness, can compel me to express myself through the written word.

My imagination was a great place to escape from all the anxiety and disapproval of my life... I had to live in my head... art was a way of making myself feel better.

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

When you're that age - that middle-school age, early high school - you're changing. You're going crazy. So I put all of my energy into pretending I was someone else, battling and screaming and all that stuff - casting spells and getting into a whole fantasy world. It was really healthy for me.

I suffer from deep depression, so my only release is music.

If creative work protects a man against mental illness, it is small wonder that he pursues it with avidity; and even if the state of mind he is seeking to avoid is no more than a mild state of depression or apathy, this still constitutes a cogent reason for engaging in creative work even when it brings no obvious external benefit in its train.

When I had troubles, I'd go out - with basketball, you can do it by yourself, too. So you'd go out and shoot, and you'd fantasize.

While growing up, I lived in my own fantasy world. I had kind of a rough childhood, so I created my own reality.

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.

The ability to suspend reality and go into a make-believe world can be really, really difficult if there's something really big going on.

Creativity is what helps me escape a lot of my inner demons.

I spent my childhood in an imaginary world - probably because I needed an escape. I think that's one of the reasons people have imaginations - because they can't maintain existence here.

People are getting ready for music that makes them feel happy again rather than being depressed at the way the world is going right now.

Music and art and culture is escapism, and escapism sometimes is healthy for people to get away from reality. The problem is when they stay there.

I've always been in the theater. I've always gone to it. That's been my way to cope. Early on in my career, I remember running - fleeing - to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

As a musician usually music is your way out.

Music is a weapon in the war against unhappiness.

I guess I watch movies to make myself happier a lot.

I'm interested in how artists and writers do this, using art as therapy. Escaping into the worlds we create. We're all victims and few of us are truly free.

If you have a little sensibility or a heart, you have all the reason to be depressed once in a while. But the depression is like a motor for creation. I need a little bit of depression, a bit of acid in my stomach, to be able to create. When I'm happy, I just want to dance.

It would be easy to say that I want to play a role that was very much like myself, but more or less with acting, you get to be all these different things, and you aren't trying to be yourself, so it's escapism in a way.

I started cooking out of middle school depression.

To me, wrestling is therapy. No matter how bad my personal situation is, when I step into the ring, all my troubles disappear. My baggage stays in the back where it belongs.

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

I suspect, for a lot of people who become actors, there's a feeling of wanting to be someone other than who they actually are.