“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.”

New York Times (January 8, 1981)
Source: Ways of Escape

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Jan. 5, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape …" by Graham Greene?
Graham Greene photo
Graham Greene 164
English writer, playwright and literary critic 1904–1991

Related quotes

Gabriel García Márquez photo

“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

William Beckford photo

“I fear I shall never be…good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon.”

William Beckford (1760–1844) English novelist

Letter to Catherine, Lady Hamilton, April 1781; cited from Lewis Melville The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill (London: William Heinemann, 1910) p. 92.

“Emerson writes in his Journal that all men try their hands at poetry, but few know which their poems are. The poets are not those who write poems, but those who know which of the things they write are poems.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Quote from a 1962 essay by Andre; as quoted in ' Objects Are What We Aren't' https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/26/objects-are-what-we-arent/, by Andy Battaglia; The Parish Review, February 26, 2015

E. B. White photo

“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

Letter to Shirley Wiley (30 March 1954), in The Letters of E. B. White (1989), p. 391

Gertrude Stein photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Letter to Horace Davenport (3 April 1989).

Related topics