Why Do I Write Quotes

#1. If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.

John Lydon

#2. Why do you write?' Because I love words and stories so much. Because I would be grief stricken every day of my life if I couldn't write. Because I'm obsessed and compelled. Because I'd be utterly useless at anything else.

Jennifer Donnelly

#3. Why do you have to be out of town to write a postcard? I want a to write a postcard to my neighbor: "I still live near you!" The guy sees me go into my apartment, flips the card over, it's just a picture of me holding a rifle.

Jim Gaffigan

#4. Ask yourself, "Why do I want to be in shape?" and write all ... Put your list everywhere to constantly remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing and how your life will improve by becoming fitter.

Jillian Michaels

#5. You may well ask me why ... I took the time to write [books]. I can only reply that I do not know. There was no why about it. I had to: that was all.

George Bernard Shaw

#6. Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

Edward Abbey

#7. I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write.

August Wilson

#8. Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers ... This is not yet a scientific age ...

Richard P. Feynman

#9. Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.

Margaret Atwood

#10. O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a letter of criticism I swear I will write for my own praise or blame in future. It is a misery.

Virginia Woolf

#11. People ask me all the time why I write. I do realize that one day I will have to answer this question, most likely in front of a large crowd. But how do you tell the truth when you struggle just to write it? How do you admit that the words are just salve to the things you are too afraid to say?

Kacey Vanderkarr

#12. I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

Carl Sandburg

#13. I do not write often now - not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear. Why dwell upon it?

Mary Boykin Chesnut

#14. Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare time: but do it as if it is a whole time job.

Ngaio Marsh

#15. People ask me, 'Why are you still writing books?' Like I'm still only writing to make money and as soon as I have enough I'll quit and go fishing? I like to write books. It's the most satisfying thing I do.

Elmore Leonard

#16. I do feel guilty. I do. Especially about my family, my children. I write about them, and I know that this will haunt them as well through their lives. Why did I do that to them?

Karl Ove Knausgaard

#17. It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

Vladimir Nabokov

#18. I never even held a guitar until I was 23 and living in California, but then loved it. I'm really not an accomplished instrumentalist. Maybe that has something to do with why I write and sing.

J. D. Souther

#19. Why do I write? The truth, the unvarnished truth, is that I haven't a clue.

Gloria Naylor

#20. Why do I write books? Why do I think? Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better.

Zygmunt Bauman

#21. I know why people write poetry," Javi says. "Because they're a bunch of emotional saps with nothin' better to do than whine about ex-girlfriends and dead dogs."
"You're wrong, Javi," I say. "That's called country music.

Colleen Hoover

#22. I sometimes wonder why I do so much research - I look at other successful writers, and I think it must just be so relaxing to write about flying horses or something, but I have to make it plausible.

Michelle Paver

#23. Do I like to write? Why? About what? Will I give up and say, "Living and feeding a man's insatiable guts and begetting children occupies my whole life. Don't have time to write"?

Sylvia Plath

#24. The reward is the finished product, for me that is my light at the end of the tunnel. What comes together in the end is why I do this [shoot commercials], it's why I write so many ideas and spend so much time thinking of ideas and so on and so forth.

Jon Jon Augustavo

#25. I am getting quite uneasy about him, though why I should I do not know, but I do wish that he would write, if it were only a single line

Bram Stoker

#26. People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" ... The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.

M.F.K. Fisher

#27. Why do I write?
To be somewhere else
To get free of ourselves
To stop
To stop being anything or anywhere at all
To disappear

Rainbow Rowell

#28. Ignorance breeds antipathy. Until I got to know how computers worked, I didn't want anything to do with them. I said, 'Well, why do I need them? I write letters.' Which I still do.

Viggo Mortensen

#29. On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm doing ... I can't do it.

Joan Didion

#30. Publishers just want you to write the same book over and over again. But why would I want to do that? It would be like putting on a threadbare dressing-gown day after day.

Philip Kerr

#31. Why do I write today? The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentities stirs me to it: colored women day workers- old and experienced- returning home at dusk, in cast off clothing faces like old Florentine oak.

William Carlos Williams

#32. Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.

Robert Frost

#33. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and - boop! shovel. "Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."

George Saunders

#34. Why should I write a play? I don't have to write a play, do I? But somehow, I think that's what I'm here for, so I'd better do it.

Tom Stoppard

#35. I do not follow any tradition. I may stand at the beginning of one.

Avijeet Das

#36. So, for instance, if you came to me, I'd ask, 'Do you want to write? Do you want to improvise? Why do you want to play this instrument? What do you want to do?'

Ornette Coleman

#37. In one of my favorite anecdotes about Foucault, someone asks him why he writes books. He responds by saying something like "When I begin to write a book, I do not know how it will come out, what it will say in the end. If I already did, I wouldn't need to write it."

Thomas L. Dumm

#38. When I see films like 'Lagaan' and 'Rang De Basanti,' I feel, 'Why can't I do work like this?' Then you think and realise you need to learn more to make this kind of a film or write this kind of a film. Also, somewhere down the line, you need to be brave.

Rohit Shetty

#39. I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories likes these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.

Lloyd Jones

#40. I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.

George Lopez

#41. I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly - for about six hours - considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.

Ben Fountain

#42. Why do you think I write these feminist songs, to try and teach myself to respect myself. You know, it's not because I'm a hero.

Ani DiFranco

#43. Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#44. Why do you write meaningless philosophy?" you asked.
"Because it gives meaning to life," I whispered with deep empathy.

Debasish Mridha

#45. I don't analyze too much, because then I'll question, 'Why do I write down all of these random little phrases?'

Sue Tompkins

#46. (Authors Publish asked WHY DO YOU WRITE?) "Voices...won't...stop...talking. When I drive the car, walk the dog, stir the soup--voices make me write down what they say and shape a world to catch the words.

Delaney Green

#47. Why do I write? Because I like telling stories and I don't like repeating myself (insert chuckle here).

Najeev Raj Nadarajah

#48. Why do you write? he asked. So I can take my love for you and give it to the world, I reply. Because you won't take it from me.

Lang Leav

#49. Anyway, I don't know why I write the things I do. They sort of come into my head.

Kami Garcia

#50. Sometimes I'll write a tweet that I'll just be like, 'Why do I have to say this to all of these people?' It's like writing a Facebook status: it's the same. I view tweeting as like writing a Facebook status. Remember when we used to write statuses?

Ansel Elgort

#51. Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.

H.L. Mencken

#52. You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why.

Anne Perry

#53. Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.

Fabrizio De Andre

#54. The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?

Maurice Sendak

#55. In modern novels I try to not let myself get away and to be here, and that's why I write about my life and myself. But even when I do that there's an element of disappearing to a place that's not me. It's "the selflessness of writing". It seldom happens, but when it does it's worth quite a lot.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#56. I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do?

Lynda Barry

#57. I don't think you need a record deal to write songs. You don't need any other reason than you want to do it. It's a far cry from why some people do music today. They make it to order, which is pretty horrible.

Andy Taylor

#58. Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

Patrick Califia-Rice

#59. Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#60. Why do I write love stories? Because nothing else matters...

Ben Starling

#61. But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.

Hari Kunzru

#62. Why do I write? I guess that's been asked of every writer. I don't know. It isn't any massive compulsion.

Rod Serling

#63. There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.

Tom Waits

#64. I can't write a scene unless I've visualized it. Unless I can actually see it, and that's why a lot of reviewers have said my books are very cinematic, because I actually do see them before I write them.

Eric Van Lustbader

#65. Why do I find it hard to write the next line?

Gary Kemp

#66. The short answer to 'Why do you write' is - I suppose I write for some of the same reasons I read: to live a double life; to go places I haven't been; to examine life on earth; to come to know people in ways, and at depths, that are otherwise impossible; to be surprised.

Margaret Atwood

#67. People often write after they finish their career, or they don't play anymore, or they are not anymore active. So I say, why do that? And let's do it differently.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

#68. Someone asked me a while back, 'Why do artists always write about love?' And I was like, 'Love is the coolest thing that's ever happened in the world.'

Kris Allen

#69. People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy ... and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Stephen King

#70. I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.

Karl Kraus

#71. I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

Margaret Atwood

#72. I write about emotions - falling in and out of love, finding what you want to do, no matter where you are or who you are. I think that's why people feel connected.

Cecelia Ahern

#73. One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

#74. I don't really write for fun; it's not an enjoyable experience. For me, art, or whatever the hell it is I do, has always been a refuge from that which makes me want to tear my lungs out. That's why I play like I play; I'm not into entertainment.

Henry Rollins

#75. I have no sense of what I should or shouldn't talk about. I just blather. Which is why it's fun to write 'Gossip Girl.' I do tend to just talk about anything.

Cecily Von Ziegesar

#76. You ask me why I do not write something ... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale

#77. People ask why do I write strong women characters, and basically, all the girls I know are strong; the girls I've had are strong. The women in my life are strong.

Margaret Stohl

#78. I was asked once why I write poetry. I said, why do you breath?

Shannon Lynette

#79. This is why I came walking, to tell you this so that you may heal. You must listen. Conor swallowed again. "I'm listening." You do not write your life with words, the monster said. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do. There

Patrick Ness

#80. Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life? I believe a lot of our lives are spent asleep, and what I've been trying to do is hold on to those moments when a little spark cuts through the fog and nudges you.

Rufus Wainwright

#81. When I was a little kid, no matter what my parents told me, I would always argue - even if I agreed with them. And I've always been a show-off. As I've gotten older, I've found ways to be more subtle about it, but that's the way I am. I suppose that has something to do with why I write and direct.

Tom Noonan

#82. Why do I write? From selfishness. Because this state of liquefied, complex concentration, however faintly and dimly I'm able to perceive it, is the greatest pleasure I know.

Francis Spufford

#83. I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes ... I can't do it, so why bother trying?

Jesse Kellerman

#84. ...why, when people write words do they capitalize "I"? Why not capitalize "You" too? For You are as important as I am. It's hard for me to understand the human ways.

Kate McGahan

#85. You travel all over," the woman said. "Do you write about your travels?" I said, Yes, I did. Articles. Books. Whatever. "You must write Paul Theroux-type travel books," she said. I said, Exactly, and told her why.

Paul Theroux

#86. Why do I feel ashamed to use words like democracy and
freedom and brotherhood? They don't have meaning any
more. I have nothing to write about any more. Remember
all that writing I did? I was going to be a great socialist
writer. I can't make sense of a word, a simple word.

Arnold Wesker

#87. I had several publishers, and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies, and that's one reason why I'm not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don't want to write one!

Anita Pallenberg

#88. Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins-that's why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place.

Jennifer Armstrong

#89. I came out here to do the acting, and then after a year of auditions and not getting anything, I met these Italian guys and they asked me to write lyrics for them. Then they said, "Why don't you just front the band?" I said, "Well, maybe because I can't sing. I've never sang before in my life."

Malin Akerman