Quotes & Sayings About Cathartic

My wife Cecily Adams was dying of cancer, my daughter Madeline was struggling to overcome an autism diagnosis, and my father was dying, all at the same time. Writing the journal was a cathartic experience, and an extremely positive one. — Jim Beaver

I think we're in an age starved for genuine experiences, instead of cathartic phony experiences through the media, structured, engineered experiences. And those are the fast food, the masturbation of experience. They don't really exhaust any aspect of ourselves; they don't make us any stronger. — Chuck Palahniuk

The process was remarkably cathartic. I'd sit and listen to my father's voice - having not heard some of these tapes for 30 years and hearing his voice laying me down for a nap, our giggles and cooking dinner - and I remembered all those wonderful days. Normal days. — Jennifer Grant

We did a two month tour with Taj Mahal that was really healing and cathartic and a good distraction after my brother passed away. Then I knew I wanted to take a year off, and it was really nice to have that chance to fall apart. — Bonnie Raitt

Music's always been really cathartic. It's the best drug for me to get away from the everyday pressures just for a second via a good song. — Ville Valo

One ought to have some sort of transcendent realization that the world exists because the gods are trapped in the same abyss you've occupied for three years. It should be inspiring or comforting or, I don't know, cathartic. — Anaea Lay

There is an eternal difference between regret and repentance. Regret feels bad about past sins. Repentance turns away from past sins. Regret looks to our own circumstances. Repentance looks to God. Most of us are content with regret. We just want to feel bad for awhile, have a good cry, enjoy the cathartic experience, bewail our sin, and talk about how sorry we are. But we don't want to change. We don't want to deal with God. — Kevin DeYoung

Water sluices away soap and grime, even some of the shame comes with it. If she were to scrub for a thousand years she would not be clean, but she is too tired to care and she has grown accustomed to scars she cannot scour away. The sweat, the alcohol, the humid salt of semen and degradation, these she can cleanse. It is enough. She is too tired to scrub harder. Too hot and too tired, always.
At the end of her rinsing, she is happy to find a little water left in the bucket. She dips one ladleful and drinks it, gulping. And then in a wasteful, unrestrained gesture, she upends the bucket over her head in one glorious cathartic rush. In that moment, between the touch of the water, and the splash as it pools around her toes, she is clean. — Paolo Bacigalupi

I like to play music that people can feel deeply but it's also interesting to listen to - a nice balance between cathartic and pop music. — Max Bemis

I was very empty after my father passed away. It was an emotional time, as it would be for anyone, but to be in the studio every day was kind of cathartic and healing and it just seemed very natural to continue. — Dhani Harrison

Acting can be an amazingly cathartic thing - especially for young girls. — Ellen Pompeo

I've always enjoyed doing dishes. Maybe it was the fashionable yellow gloves that I loved so much. It's weird, I know, but I find cleaning cathartic. — Rachel Nichols

Margot winked at her. "Every so often, we gather together. We take a little time - a little cathartic time - to vent about those quirks that drive us
crazy."
Elbows on the table, I leaned forward. "So, which of the quirks are we talking about?"
"First item on the list - the raising of the eyebrow." To demonstrate, she arched a carefully sculpted black brow of her own, then peered around at each of us. — Chloe Neill

To relinquish your typical everyday character for a brief while, in pursuit of uninhibited sexual pleasure can be an incredibly cathartic experience.......Why not try it some time? — Miya Yamanouchi

The paintings each take several months to do and it's quite a cathartic and intense experience that's very pleasurable, but also very strange. — Oliver Jeffers

I've been doing some writing, which I find very cathartic and fun. — Cary Elwes

The violence for me is never meant to be entertaining. It's meant to hurt the characters and I'm trying to show the impact it is having on the people involved with it. If there is cathartic violence at the end, then it costs the protagonist something. It's not just a blaze-of-glory moment. — Charlie Huston

The Life Cube Burn is cathartic, fun, exciting, and even reverent. It's a spectacular opportunity to put a sense of finality to the event. And when those thousands of written "wish-sticks" inserted into the Cube from all kinds of people combine with the art and shared messaging from the write boards in a blaze of flame and a column of smoke and ashes, it becomes a communal and very spiritual moment. — Scott Cohen

A friend of mine had died, and I went for an audition. It was weird and cathartic: the producer was very excited about the piece, but my brain wasn't working, and it all seemed really pointless and fickle. I told them I didn't want to be there any more, and left. It was the most terrifying and empowering audition experience I've had. — Darren Boyd

Playing live is what it's all about for me. It's cathartic, it's emotional, it's about communing with people. The way you feel after a gig is a such a powerful thing. — Paul Weller

I have never been depressed or thrown a plate, which I attribute to the cathartic effects of writing books about people whose lives are more grueling than mine. — Emma Donoghue

Cathy gets up early to clean the house every Saturday, no matter what. It could be her birthday, it could be the morning of the Rapture - Cathy will get up early on Saturday to clean. She says it's cathartic, it sets her up for a good weekend, and because she cleans the house aerobically, it means she doesn't have to go to the gym. — Paula Hawkins

You try to tap into a memory and you close your eyes and it comes back. So I was doing this in the painting and then that became a practice of mine. Sometimes it was a cathartic situation, a way to meditate. — Jose Parla

A lot of people say it's cathartic to cook, and I'm like, 'How is it cathartic washing all these dishes?' — Sherri Shepherd

We adored it, and discussed it, and swapped jokes from it, and it made us feel more alive. In some way, it was cathartic: it exhilarated us by lifting us up above our everyday frustrations and boredoms. It gave us a liberating perspective on this odd event unfolding around us, called 'our life.' And when, years later, I became bewildered by the reception of Monty Python by some of our looniest fans, I suddenly realised they were experiencing exactly the combination of emotions that had rendered me such a devotee of the Goons, and so I was able to forgive them. — John Cleese

Sleep deprivation is physically miserable and creatively cathartic, as internal landscapes rise up from their dormant ashes. — Jaeda DeWalt

For me, working out is a form of therapy. It's cathartic for me; it's a good stress reliever. I know that when I go to the gym I am taking care of myself, and I know I'll feel so much better afterwards. — Bob Harper

My heart was in a perpetual state of sadness and the only relief I could find were in those cathartic cries. I lived a fragile existence. — Fisher Amelie

She breathes in as I breathe out and her lungs fill with the air that was inside of me. I love her completely and I love giving her life as she gives me life. I breathe in her quintessence and it's cathartic. — Ella Dominguez

Not the dreams where we are hunted by the monsters, but the dreams where we are the monsters. We raise bloody hands to the sky and scream, not from fear, but from joy. The pure joy of slaughter. The cathartic moment when we plunge our hands into the hot blood of our enemies and there is no civilized thought to stop us from dancing on their graves. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Songwriting can be cathartic, but then you just keep it private. If you're going to play out and have other people listen to you, then you need to make sure there's some point to what you're saying. — Patterson Hood

Many producers state without blinking that the audience wants a happy ending. They say this because up-ending films tend to make more money than down-ending films. The reason for this is that a small percentage of the audience won't go to any film that might give it an unpleasant experience. Generally their excuse is that they have enough tragedy in their lives. But if we were to look closely, we'd discover that they not only avoid negative emotions in movies, they avoid them in life. Such people think that happiness means never suffering, so they never feel anything deeply. The depth of our joy is in direct proportion to what we've suffered. Holocaust survivors, for example, don't avoid dark films. They go because such stories resonate with their past and are deeply cathartic. — Robert McKee

I don't keep a journal anymore. I did when I was younger, and I think its good for young girls to try and express what they are feeling on paper; it's cathartic. — Hilary Duff

The only thing that's helped me get through some really hard times was just being able to write and express - it's very cathartic for me. I'm hoping that, by writing and performing for other people, it affects them the same way. — Sharon Van Etten

Killing characters on television has become an easy short cut to cathartic emotion. — Nic Pizzolatto

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error. — Yann Martel

It's incredibly fun to play someone that you don't like. It exorcises your own demons in a way. It's cathartic. We all have things that we don't like about ourselves, little things. And I get to amplify those things and put them out there. It's fun and it has a cleansing effect. — Ed Helms

I would be lying, if I said that sometimes it is just a job that you show up for because you're getting paid, and that's important, too. But, if you can be in a state of mind where you enjoy your job, whether it's just a job, or it's actually cathartic for you, or it's something personal. I think it would be much easier to be content with doing a good job. — Julianne Moore

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. — Francesca Lia Block

Mostly singing was cathartic, writing was cathartic, therapeutic. I don't think I had a goal, particularly, to sing or put it out there for anybody. — Lisa Marie Presley

Readings are more like weaving a tapestry. Possibly people are getting a cathartic release - but music is physical. Music pummels you. It's got a beat; it's loud. Whereas this is more cerebral. — John Darnielle

Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution. — George Will

I was very happy, I think part of the point of this creativity is to do something that helps you in a cathartic sense. — Winston Graham

It's important to me that the words that I put out there into the cosmos, into the universe, be empowering or somehow positive for people that hear them, or maybe be cathartic if someone is having a relationship that's having a tough time. — Gloria Estefan

I remember seeing Richard Pryor's first movie; it was a midnight movie when I was in high school. I must have been about fifteen. It was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. I'd never laughed that much. — Marc Maron

We want to see drama told in a cathartic way, with power, with emotion where you empathize and then you're frightened. All those feelings charge up in you and you feel for the story. — Danny Boyle

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. As a memoirist, you have to crack your head open and examine every uncomfortable thing in there. — Koren Zailckas

At the age of 50, I did "Celebrity Fit Club" and I had to get on a scale and be weighed in front of everyone. I felt like I was naked and for the first time, there was nowhere to hide. I felt like I could finally be myself. It was really cathartic, and I realized I could share my mistakes. I could tell my story and not be ashamed, and show others with these same problems that they aren't alone. — Maureen McCormick

I do find acting cathartic. — Francesca Annis

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation ... — Aldous Huxley

Valentine's Day is devoted to love. Why don't we have a day devoted to hatred? The raw, visceral hatred that is felt every hour of the day by ordinary people, but is repressed for reasons of social order. I think it would be very cathartic, and it would certainly make for an exciting six o'clock news. — George Carlin

How did one even fraternize with people who could not entertain vivid scenarios of self-mutilation? How was the sexual act even possible if one's partner could not entertain being crushed under a truck, just as a cathartic exercise? What important piece of her brain was missing that deprived her of such, well, deeply necessary acts of physical editing? — Ben Marcus

Why is the public so interested in movies about the wealthy? My answer is that Shakespeare wrote about kings. That's where the action is. And it's the classic, cathartic thing. You get to indulge in a lifestyle you're not part of, a tragic error leads to a downfall, and you get to say, 'Thank God I'm not him.' — Nicholas Jarecki

For me, music is sort of my passion, more so than being an actor. I just never tried to make a career as a musician. It was just something that I did on my own time, just for me. I had written a lot of songs, but I don't really record a lot of music because, for me, it's the same way as a poet: I write to get things out. It's sort of cathartic. — Steve Kazee

Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation. — Bell Hooks

Everybody should write a book whether you get it published or not because the experience of sort of taking it all and throwing it down on paper is unbelievably cathartic. — Gary Dell'Abate

Power had preyed on weakness here: all kinds of power - local, racial, tribal, royal, national, global, economic - on all kinds of weakness, stopping at nothing, not even at the smallest girl child. But power does that everywhere. The world is saturated in blood. Every tribe has their blood-soaked legacy: here was mine. I waited for whatever cathartic feeling people hope to experience in such places, but I couldn't make myself believe the pain of my tribe was uniquely gathered here, in this place, the pain was too obviously everywhere, this just happened to be where they'd placed the monument. I gave up and went in search of Lamin. — Zadie Smith

I feel I should try to reveal. When you hit it right, you produce an emotional response in the listener that can be cathartic. When you're wrong, you're soppy, sentimental. — Paul Simon

I'd like to see more stand-up routines venture into depicting tragedy. It's conventional to give people a humorous cathartic release; now I'd love to hear stand-up tragedy that would reduce the audience to exhausted tears. — Chuck Palahniuk

That was my cathartic moment - when I realized humans have difficulty believing in themselves, but if someone believes in them, they can accomplish anything. — Sean DeLauder

Or you can fake your own death," Bill suggested.
"Because really, that's the most cathartic resolution - if all your friends and family think you're dead. Everyone cries, they have a little rant about all your potential going to waste, they put on a memorial service and you can hide and see who bothers to come - and if you're really lucky, they bury an empty coffin. When they couldn't even be bothered to spot you a twenty 'til payday. You know how much booze you could buy for the cost of a single coffin? — Jordan Castillo Price

It was my angry, Dickensian novel, I suppose. It was cathartic - I expended a lot of frustration on that one. — Richard Helms

Don't leave me," he whispers.
"Oh for crying out loud-no! I am not going to go!" I shout, and it's cathartic. There, I've said it. I am not leaving. — E.L. James

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up. — Elizabeth Gilbert

And music has always been incredibly cathartic for me, whether it's writing my own stuff or singing other people's music; it's very freeing. — Sarah McLachlan

Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come. — Charles Caleb Colton

There's something cathartic about swearing 150 times after spending ten hours in the editing room. — Liev Schreiber

The waitress walk away. Everyone look's at each other and then laugh. The laugh it feel so cathartic. It break the ice and sudenly the mood feel like old times. They may not have money now to aford food, but they still have each other. And forget what Maslow's "heirarchey of needs" say: some time's freindship is more important than nutrient's. — Seinfeld 2000

The greatest movie would be the movie that gave the audience a cathartic feeling of transcendence. — Nick Nolte

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. — Eamonn Walker

I really think, if anything, there is more evidence to show that the violent games reduce aggression and violence. There have actually been some studies about that, that it's cathartic. If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you're probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention. I think it's at worst neutral and potentially positive. — John Carmack

So if you're on the motorcycle, on the track you're not thinking at all about what's happening next week or tomorrow or anything. You're literally thinking about the turn you're setting up and there's something about that I find very cathartic and meditative. — Dax Shepard

Violence can be very grotesque and also intensely attractive. What interests me is how the two - beauty and violence - live side by side, and how moments can be created and erased almost simultaneously. Destruction is painful, but at times it can be very cathartic. — Ori Gersht

I know that Wes Craven feels watching horror films does have a psychological effect, in a good way. It is very cathartic. He might be right about that. — Marley Shelton

No thanks. I'm not an artist." "You don't have to be. That's the beauty of creating art. It's cathartic. Think of your past, your present, your future. Draw what troubles you. It can be a face, a place, a story inside of one single image. — Keri Lake

My head translates emotions into song. Songwriting is cathartic for me. — Antoniette Costa

Live interaction with a crowd is a cathartic, spiritual kind of exchange, and it's intensified at a festival. — Trent Reznor

Trauma happens in relationships, so it can only be healed in relationships. Art can't provide healing. It can be cathartic and therapeutic but a relationship is a three-part journey. — Alanis Morissette

It seemed inevitable to try to address my feelings about everything that had happened. To a certain degree, it felt cathartic, but it's less cathartic to me than it is illuminating and helping me navigate my own feelings. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

I'm perfectly happy complaining, because it's cathartic, and I'm perfectly happy arguing with people on the Internet because arguing is my favourite pastime - not programming. — Linus Torvalds

I do like to write nasty songs. It's a useful weapon to have, and it's cathartic as well, because I create art out of anger, something positive out of something negative. — Lisa Marie Presley

I have an interest in giving people a cathartic experience, and making them look at homeless people differently, and making them question how they judge people, in general. — Paul Bettany

There is something cathartic about what has happened to me during this stay in hospital. I've heard others say that coming face to face with your own mortality can have this effect. You look with harsh, savage eyes at the life you are living and resolve to make the best of the time you have left, if you can be allowed the luxury of a few extra years to fulfill your plans. Around me, I see an urgency creep into the lives of friends once they have an AIDS diagnosis: they rush out and try to complete as many life projects as they can, before their health deteriorates. — David Menadue

It was difficult for me to feel my feelings, so I just buried them. Then I found that acting was a way for me to get them out. But now that I'm a reasonably sane adult, acting is more about my trying to engage other people: Acting is cathartic for the viewer as well. — Adelaide Kane

Laughter can be a form of forgiveness - a gift, cathartic. — Briar Kit Esme

In fiction, the actions of a villain, even when unspeakable, can be cathartic to read about. They let us experience darkness, but add a safe remove. — Cassandra Clare

I remember a concert for a visiting girls school, and that was the first time I ever sang - it was always about girls - that was the main thing. But somewhere along the line, it became a cathartic thing. — Chet Faker

Writing is cathartic when you write to please yourself not others. — C.C. Wyatt

But what was excruciating at first turned cathartic the more he talked. In telling his story, he discovered that he had developed definite ideas about his own motives and decisions. These ideas seemed to have formed in the ether of emotions and dreams, that wooly fog that lay outside the footlights of the conscious mind. They were not large revelations, but were rather like the little epiphanies one suffers and enjoys over a morning cup of tea. — Josiah Bancroft

Being so honest in my writing is cathartic. — Brian Molko

The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace
— Oliver Sacks

If all things work together for good for them that love God and are called according to His purpose, then this means that billions of plot points are going to come together in the most satisfying cathartic release possible at the end of all time. The — Douglas Wilson

Writing Frank was a little cathartic, since it gave me the chance to climb on my soapbox and expose readers to a side of autism they likely have never knowingly encountered. — Bru Baker

I suppose is very cathartic to do a show to the masses and you get to make magic in a manner that you can't do in regular life, but I suppose that self esteem effect is one of the most powerful. — Sinead O'Connor

I like to think that my music allows people that cathartic cry. — Mary Lambert

There's something really cathartic about that, about owning up to your truth. — Kevin Kwan

Writing music and lyrics that mean something personal to me. It's an exciting, intense, cathartic, this-is-who-I-am experience. — Mark Hoppus

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery, when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul. — Sonja Sohn

...the weeping, the tears of the hosts, whose sympathy underscores the inherent tragedy of my life as a transgender person, and this moment fulfilling the cathartic arc of rejection to acceptance, without ever interrogating the pathology of a society that refuses to acknowledge the spectrum of gender in the exact same blind way they refuse to see a spectrum of race or sexuality. — Lana Wachowski

Your diary should be a nepenthe. — Joe Dunthorne