Catharsis Quotes

No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. (Roger Ebert)
And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things. View quote
Maurice Sendak
There's something about a catharsis that is very important. View quote
Glenn Close
Better still - your history has shown how powerful a moral catharsis expressed through popular resistance to injustice can sometimes be; I have in mind the grassroots opposition to the Vietnam War. View quote
Breyten Breytenbach
Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile. View quote
Edward Zwick
The interesting thing about acting is using all your own stuff and having some kind of personal catharsis while you're working. View quote
Melanie Lynskey
The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me. View quote
Nathalie Sarraute
When had a slave religion proved anything but an aid to the conqueror? Slaves needed a wailing wall; they went into their temples, prayed to their gods to deliver them from oppression, and came out to work in the fields and factories, relaxed and made harmless by the emotional catharsis of prayer. View quote
Robert A. Heinlein
God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis. View quote
Sylvia Plath
For fourteen years [1966 to 1980] [my father] suffered a debilitating disease [multiple schlerosis]. I took care of him for most of that time, until he was no longer able to be taken care of at home... So, in essence, I was caring for [my father] and my younger sister [Becky], six years younger than I. It was difficult for me. It was a tough time. Music was my escape -- my catharsis. My way of just getting my emotions out. Music has always been a beautiful force in my life. View quote
Gloria Estefan
The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught. (Anne Rice)
Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end...crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads). View quote
Khaled Hosseini
I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me - and I think for all of us - not only our own hope, but America's everlasting, living dream. I think the life which we have fashioned in America, and which has fashioned us - the forms we made, the cells that grew, the honeycomb that was created - was self-destructive in its nature, and must be destroyed. I think these forms are dying, and must die, just as I know that America and the people in it are deathless, undiscovered, and immortal, and must live. View quote
Thomas Wolfe
He was all for catharsis and purification, he dreamed of an aesthetic consecration that should cleanse society of luxury, the greed of gold and all unloveliness. View quote
Thomas Mann
Q: You seem relatively upbeat and sociable. It's funny, because I've always had this idea of you, like, always crying in the dark. A: Most people do. Q: Do you care about that? A: Oh, no. It doesn't bother me. Whatever people think of me is fine, however they want to envision me. I find it curious. I'm always intrigued by who people think I am and the persona they have created for me, what they think I'm into, what they think I'm not into. But I certainly understand that consideration, that I would be a bleak and miserable person, because a lot of my lyrics are very despondent. Luckily, I have the music to use as catharsis. If I didn't, I might spend more time sitting and crying in a corner than I need to. Also, I think manners are very important. To be a sullen rain cloud when conversing with someone, be they your friends or a journalist, I think is inappropriate. View quote
Davey Havok
If architecture is the history of all phallic emotion, the Empire State Building is utter catharsis, and we are sitting in its silhouette. View quote
Timothy Levitch
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility. View quote
Martin Luther King Jr.
A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language ... not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions. View quote
Aristotle
A great myth is relevant as long as the predicament of humanity lasts; as long as humanity lasts. It will always work, on those who can receive it, the same catharsis. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Catharsis isn't art. You can't rely on catharsis to get a laugh. Because guess what? People do laugh when something's shocking, but that is, to me, the absolute fakest of laughs. That's not something that sustains a television series, or a movie, or even 45 minutes of a stand-up set at Carolines. View quote
Mindy Kaling
I sometimes think it's like a weird elastic band. The more tragic your work is, the quicker you snap back. There's a catharsis in telling a miserable old tale; you get rid of demons. (Anne-Marie Duff)
You get a show where people are jumping up and dancing, but it's not a critical event in the sense of profound catharsis. Essentially it's celebratory. View quote
Archie Shepp
Bin Laden wasn't all that central to the terrorist network any more, but taking him down created a kind of national catharsis. It's been a really, really long time since we had something to celebrate that didn't involve a sports team. I'd rather it had been a non-death-related occasion, but we'll take what we can get. View quote
Gail Collins
A movie can and should have some real dissonance throughout - rage, heartache, tears, conflict, catharsis and all the other elements Aristotle demanded of a good story - but the chord has to be resolved. View quote
Josh Radnor
I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys. View quote
Peter Mullan