1.
And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
Maurice Sendak
2.
A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself . . . with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.
Aristotle
3.
If architecture is the history of all phallic emotion, the Empire State Building is utter catharsis, and we are sitting in its silhouette.
Timothy Levitch
4.
The catharsis that finalizes Dostoevsky's novels might be - of course inadequately and somewhat rationalistically - expressed in this way: nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always be in the future
Mikhail Bakhtin
5.
There's something about a catharsis that is very important.
Glenn Close
6.
Was there happiness at the end [of the movie], they wanted to know. If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn't know what to say. Does anybody's? After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, undmindful of beginning, en, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.
Khaled Hosseini
7.
I always said it kept me alive - photography - because it did. It was my catharsis.
Bruce Gilden
8.
Catharsis comes from the ancient Greek word...which literally translated means 'to pass a hard stool'
Tim Sandlin
9.
You're free because you don't have to expose yourself, and you can go wild, and let your id completely out of its box, and nobody will see you because you're operating through a surrogate. It's an opportunity to crack open your shell, to melt down yourself, and just let yourself go. It's a form of catharsis for me.
Wayne White
10.
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. Such subjects overwhelm art.
Roger Ebert
11.
My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.
Bret Easton Ellis
12.
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
13.
Art is a form of catharsis emotional release, purging, cleansing, purifying.
Dorothy Parker
14.
This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine.
Dorothy Parker
15.
Catharsis isn’t a wound being excavated from childhood.
Sarah Ruhl
17.
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.
Nathalie Sarraute
18.
I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.
Joan Didion
19.
I just think that, at the end of the day, you needed the catharsis of revelation.
Greg Bryk
20.
I don't feel that catharsis in a play necessarily takes place during the course of a play. Often it should take place afterward.
Edward Albee
21.
Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end…crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis (nomads).
Khaled Hosseini
22.
It can stand in the way of narration in cases where we want the protagonist to actually go through some kind of catharsis while our own (non-fictional) experiences and stories lead to something banal or completely uninteresting.
Sasa Stanisic
24.
I use my work as catharsis. That's often the best thing that we can do, is to allow ourselves to rage because it's so rare that we get to. We're told to forgive - I don't want to! I don't want to forgive my abuser! I don't care to and I don't like that assumption that forgiveness makes me a better person. It's not authentic to me, my feelings and what I need. But everyone has their own way.
Margaret Cho
25.
The interesting thing about acting is using all your own stuff and having some kind of personal catharsis while you're working.
Melanie Lynskey
26.
When you can bring yourself to write about it one day, you will find it all less painful. It is a catharsis of sorts, but the process can be brutal. Don’t do it until you’re ready.
Danielle Steel
27.
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.
Sylvia Plath
28.
Catharsis returns us to the purpose for which were originally intended - to be called by God to do good - and thus ultimately returns us to ourselves.
Desmond Tutu