Alice Hoffman Quotes

I make music to process - because I have to, not for praise or accolades or reactions.

Recording happiness made it last longer, we felt, and recording sorrow dramatized it and took away its bitterness; and often we settled some problem which beset us even while we wrote about it.

Art is a form of catharsis.

Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength.

Making reality real is art's responsibility.

I think grief is a step towards strength because it allows you to be porous and take everything in, and have it transform you. What will sit within you is despairing, but at least it's feeling. You're not numb. Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.

I do find it therapeutic, writing about stuff that was frightening and painful as a child, and managing to see it from an adult's point of view. To get it out of the closet onto paper, metaphorically speaking, is therapeutic.

Depression isn't the almighty ruler of your destiny. Even its familiar traits - grief, anger, despair - you find that you can use in other ways. I can create with them in my writing and my life, mix them up with excitement and pleasure. I can name that terrible, numbing paralysis and know it will pass.

I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out.

The world exists to end up in a book.

In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief.

The true meaning of an artist/actor is opening my heart to the audience and at the same time opening their heart. Through sharing my pain I can possibly heal your pain, there is no other feeling like it, money doesn't compare. This is the true meaning of Art. I will attempt to do it till my dying day.

You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.

If you don't transform your suffering, you'll transmit it.

Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.

Art is no crime. It's every artist's responsibility to make art that is meaningful

Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

The rôle of the artist is that of a soldier of the revolution.

We cannot heal what we cannot feel.

I try to get through emotional pain and not go around it, it always ends sooner that way. I also use chocolate.

If art is not a medicine for the society, it is a poison.

I don't think my work is so much about opening up wounds. I think it's about understanding the nature of the wound. I'm not bleeding on the canvas. I, like most people, have suffered traumatic events. The character of a person's life is determined by the way they deal with those events. I am a creative person and I deal with it creatively.

And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.

I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life.

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.