Robert Smith Quotes

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

Everything I was feeling, all the hurt and the pain and the emotion I was going through, I put into my music.

If I didn't have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

Things that I feel really sad about, I talk about. That way, if it's funny, it doesn't hurt anymore.

As long as I could sing my songs, I wasn't as angry about what had happened, about being shoved back for this or shoved back for the other.

Saying things on paper that I would never, ever say, and saying things to myself, admitting things to myself, about myself and my personality, just putting it on paper, is how I deal with emotional pain.

We all battling different things. Me? I'm just able to channel that through my music.

Sometimes I have to run and hide. What I do at home sometimes is, I listen to a CD of the roughness of the ocean. I turn every light off, and I turn the stereo on, and I just go in my mind, cry, talk to God, tell him, 'I'm your child, too.' And I stay in my little solitude until I can get the strength to go outdoors.

I almost never cry, and it's something I don't like about myself. I sometimes try and make myself cry. Sometimes, when I'm in pain, I say if I could just cry it would make it so much easier.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

I've always had a little bit of darkness, and I've always been someone who was grieving. I had kind of had a tumultuous upbringing living in an abusive home, so for me, writing has always been a point of catharsis.

Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.

My music started as a way to break through weaknesses - like anxiety, which was completely taking over my whole life, where I could barely function.

Instead of slashing my wrists, I just write a bunch of really crummy songs.

You can punch a wall or write a song. Just as painful either way, but you have something to show for it at the end of the day with a song.

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

I turned to music originally because of my past and needing a release or an outlet to get out anger or frustration or hurt.

Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.

Music was my one way to vent.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

I have a tendency to face my bad fantasies in my books.

'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.

I started writing diaries, and mine were horrible. Oh, the monotony. Oh, the angst. I said, 'I don't want anyone to find these!' I destroyed them.

Generally, all my life, I have had strong friction with life - I was a problematic soldier, I was kicked out of the army, I was in fights. There was something about writing that was a way of experimenting with this emotion.

Being funny is a symptom of what's underneath. You're pumping out all that energy because something else is going on inside you, some opposing force, something uncomfortable.