Robert Cormier Quotes

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

I think poetry was always where I went to deal with my deepest feelings.

I've always felt an overwhelming need to get out what was inside. The vehicle for me was words on paper - not speech, not art, not dance, not anything else.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I'm writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn't an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

I see myself as someone who's been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would have ended up without it.

Now I write often. I decided that I need to write for myself - I can't really direct other people's material.

What you write should entertain you and serve you first. Don't worry about maintaining anything beyond your own attention. Focus on exorcising your demons in the work. If you can do that, then you'll succeed in the world.

I know it's a cliché to say I write for myself, but I write for myself.

I need to write to be happy.

For me, poetry was... the fastest way to express what I was feeling, what I was going through.

Doing makeup was a way to create characters, only I got tired of doing it for other people.

I love singing just for my own benefit.

I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out.

Music I can discover a part of myself that I haven't been able to for a long time, and acting is the opposite. I'm in love with both of them and I would never choose one over the other.

If you want to express yourself, you need the services of a lover or a psychiatrist; if you want to express a book, you might conceivably manage it.

I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.

I guess writing is a kind of therapy in the sense that there are things you need to say and you say them, and better out than in.

My songs are just little letters to me.

Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression.

At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It's like therapy for me, because it exposes what I'm really thinking.

I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write.

My music has always been enough.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn't express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

Writing is a good creative outlet... it's a supplement to my music.