Cathartic Writing Quotes

When I have a lot of emotion going on, I'll write. I write letters to my family, my boyfriend, anyone I'm trying to get my point across to. It's easier for me to express myself.

The mind can be trained to relieve itself on paper.

I just write from how I feel. As an outlet.

When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.

So long as you write it away regularly nothing can really hurt you.

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.

One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them.

I keep a journal. I like myself better when I just pour it out. It's easier sometimes, even if you write on a piece of paper and then tear it up, just to vent it out. Because in the past I have sometimes used interviews as therapy, and then I've regretted it because I'm going, "Wait a second, that is not for the world to know. That's for me to know."

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.

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

I've often said to myself, "Thank God I can write, 'cause this is hilarious." I actually wanted to go into all that more in the book, but my editor thought it was too crazy.

It was only as I wrote about it that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

It's true, we tend to write about the same thing over and over again because this is our trauma. If I had been in World War II, I might have been writing about D-Day over and over again.

Now the truth is, writing is a great way to deal with a lot of difficult emotional issues. It can be very therapeutic, but that's best done in your journal, or on your blog if you're an exhibitionist. Trying to put a bunch of *specific* stuff from your personal life into your story usually just isn't appropriate unless you're writing a memoir or a personal essay or something of the sort.

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 can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating.

When it became easy enough to do dairy online, then I just thought, "Oh, I'll start doing this. I'll put the parts online that aren't going to get me in trouble. I'll save the rest for myself." It became also this kind of self-therapy. I could write about stuff that was bothering me, or personal stuff. And the very personal stuff I could edit out. But it was kind of the catharsis of getting it out and writing about it, that made me think, "Okay, I see why people do this, why they keep these diaries." So I thought, "Well, let's see what happens when I post some of it."

I think that there must be a point of self-immersion in a story that is a point of no return. You get far enough in that the story has really touched you to the core and deeply troubled you and made you unhappy and fearful, and then how do you get out of that? I'm a writer, so my way of getting out of that is to write.

it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. ... Pour out the dull things on paper too-you can tear them up afterward-for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

My love songs are very personal and quite weird. They don't really have the big radio hit choruses because basically they're my therapy, stuff I have to get off my chest.

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic.