Jesmyn Ward Quotes

I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia.

I always find out after the fact that the books I've been writing were actually some sort of therapy, some sort of, you know, self-examination that I had to write the book in order to complete.

One writes not to be read but to breathe...one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes--in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer--you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'.

I have been blessed with roles that allow me to express something very personal at a specific time in my life. I seek them out; acting is my therapy.

That's what I enjoy most about my music - that it heals in its own time and makes us look at ourselves in its own time.

I'm shy, and I can hide behind my acting and discover the truth about myself because it's cathartic in that way. But I tend not to read reviews.

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.

It's not that I'm necessarily looking for things that are so dark and emotional. But if I see something where the character goes through enormous change, it's very appealing to play all those levels, and that is probably going to involve some dark moments.

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.

It was very hard for me to put my life on paper. It was a very intimate process, very psychological, but at the same time liberating. It was like cleaning the closet, like cleaning the house... It was very refreshing.

There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal.

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

Music enables me to cleanse and shed the things that I feel are holding me back from growing, or growing up.

In the beginning, I was searching for myself in my music. My music was for me. I didn't have the mental room to be conscious of the listener; I wrote to save myself.

Writing is a type of therapy for me. I'm always trying to break down what happened, and why I felt a certain way.

With 'Guzaarish' I went through a catharsis.

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.

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

Fang. I had to do some thinking about him. Me. I had some thinking to do about me too.

What do you do when you finally hear everything you've always thought said aloud?

I am ashamed every day, and more ashamed the next. But I will spend the rest of my life in this living space writing these notes, this journal, recording my acts and reflections, finding some honor, some worth at the bottom of things. I want ten thousand pages that will stop the world.

I am trying to be in that alchemical soup of human transformation. I am trying to process, reconcile, forgive, let go, and grieve, when necessary.

I write for myself things that I've gone through.