Graham Joyce Quotes

Writing for me is definitely a form of ventilation - a way for me to cope and deal with emotions. I think it is for any writer.

I find it easier to write about stuff that is frustrating.

When I was young, I would just write poems into textbooks in class. Everybody needs that outlet. For me, I think it's less about learning about myself and more about just needing to get things out sometimes.

No, I don't think songwriting is emotionally challenging - I feel like it's almost a way to sort through your emotions and put them out there.

Most things I go through I have to write about.

It can be really powerful to write something when you're sad.

It's really funny - when I'm depressed or I'm having a hard time, I'll write really fun stuff. And then when I'm really happy, I write really depressing stuff.

I tend to write about my anxieties - it's what I'm afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.

My songs are basically my diaries. Some of my best songwriting has come out of time when I've been going through a personal nightmare.

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

I think anything that's creative really takes my mind off whatever it is that I'm going through in my life. If you're going through heartbreak, and you can write a song, it's a wonderful win-win, because it takes your mind off the heartbreak, and you get to vent.

I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.

One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else.

I just feel very lucky to be able to write fiction because I think, otherwise, I would have had to spend a fortune on a psychiatrist - and I still wouldn't get 1/100th of what I get writing fiction.

Most artists - painters or writers - I think create out of stress or negative situations. Look at rock music. It's about getting things off of your chest, and it's a means of venting in many ways. That's what my work is about.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you're in his life, he uses yours, too.

One of the reasons that I think I do love to write is because I did have a difficult childhood and not so great teenage years. It always helped me escape from my problems.

Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.

'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

You can punch a wall or write a song. Just as painful either way, but you have something to show for it at the end of the day with a song.

I started writing to save my life.

I always wrote poetry as a teenager and it was always so dark, but it made me feel good to get it out.

If something bothers me, it bothers me for a long time until I find a way to work it out. Music provided me with a means of working things out.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.