Top 100 Why I Write Quotes
#1. Semi-facetiously, when people ask me why I write these kinds of stories, I simply say that I was warped as a child. And, there is some truth to that.
Stephen King
#2. That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.
Chuck Palahniuk
#3. Life baffles me most days. Maybe that's why I write. To try and make sense of it all.
Christy Hall
#4. I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write.
August Wilson
#5. I'm half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That's why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I've seen so many.
J. Cole
#6. Maybe that's why I write romance. I'm a dreamer at heart. If I can't have it in real life, I'll live it on paper instead.
Nicola Haken
#7. When asked why I write, I say it is why I breathe. How I make my heart beat with life. It must be done so I can exist." The Man With the Green Suitcase
Dee Doanes
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. I'm not a very good communicator, so maybe that's why I write about talking.
Nina Nastasia
#11. Honestly...this is why I write.
I write to get the happy ending I sometimes feel is eluding me.
I write for my sanity.
Debora Dennis
#12. I think that's why I write - the not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.
Chila Woychik
#13. Take it from me: I really love making things up, which is why I write fiction for a living.
Kristin Gore
#14. You ask me why I write. You might as well ask me why I breathe. I need oxygen to feed my body and ink to feed my soul.
Bryce Main
#15. 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
#16. I feel sometimes that I'm in a constant state of being lost in translation, and I guess that why I write songs.
Laura Marling
#18. I am acutely aware that all I have been able to achieve has been in large part due to circumstances outside my control. This is why I teach, and this is why I write. I want to be one of those opportunities for others. Perhaps this is the true measure of success.
Chris Matakas
#19. I'm more interested in interpersonal relationships - between lovers families, siblings. That's why I write about how we treat each other.
Terry McMillan
#21. That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.
Paulo Coelho
#22. 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
#23. That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.
Jesmyn Ward
#24. 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
#25. That is one more reason why I write in English only right now. I prefer writing in the language I hear around me for the people by whom I am surrounded.
Yuriy Tarnawsky
#26. When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.
J.M.G. Le Clezio
#27. I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.
Brian Fallon
#28. I have, my whole life, been healing the girl inside, the part of me that struggles about being a female in the world. That's why I write about the things I write about.
India.Arie
#29. I am often asked why I write, and I don't know really
I just want to.
John Ashbery
#30. I don't know why I write really depressing songs. I'm a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I'm about normal.
Townes Van Zandt
#33. Anyway, I don't know why I write the things I do. They sort of come into my head.
Kami Garcia
#34. I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.
Paul Auster
#35. This is why I write. Because poetry begins where death is robbed of the last word.
Odysseus Elytis
#36. I have no idea why I write. The old standards are: I like to express my feelings, stretch my imagination, earn money.
S.E. Hinton
#37. The key to understanding my career is that I was never into technology. From the beginning, I brought an outsider's point of view, which is why I write for a layman's publication.
David Pogue
#38. 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
#39. This is why I write: I believe the ordinary world is filled with extraordinary stories.
Lucy Ke
#40. So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn't funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it.
Chuck Palahniuk
#41. I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.
Bessie Head
#42. Young readers are the most challenging, demanding, and rewarding of audiences. Adults often ask why I write for the younger set. My reply: 'I can't think of anyone I'd rather write for.'
Karen Hesse
#43. If a happy ending is what you're after, stop the story where it makes you smile, or cry for laughter. In life, it's the rare sweetness to have tears of joy, or painless endings. People feel. It's what they know, and it's why i write.
Mark T. Barnes
#44. This is why I write. This is why I keep speaking. This is why I endure. Because if I don't tell my stories, someone else will.
Kameron Hurley
#45. Every word I write restores me to the absence of why I write what I wouldn't write if I allowed you to come here.
Alejandra Pizarnik
#46. Generally, what adults want to know is my background, why I write what I write, and very personal insights that some say are inspiring.
Patricia Polacco
#47. Changing anything in the past, if you believe it's possible, could alter the entire future of the world, including my own birth, so I'd change nothing. Not a thing. As for the future ... I think I'd like to see how it all ends, which is probably why I write about the future apocalypse so frequently.
Jeremy Robinson
#49. 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
#50. I'm not a risk-taker; that's probably why I write - because when you're easily bored, but you don't like taking risks, you end up doing it all in your head.
Catherine Jinks
#51. I see something happening in the world, and I want to share it. It's why, during 9/11, I wrote every few minutes what I saw happening. It's why I write about meeting Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates or Larry Page.
Robert Scoble
#52. When asked why I write psychological horror, I always reply that this form is the most intimate way to reach a reader. Think about it.
Wayne Allen Sallee
#53. Social issues, reclusiveness, combined with regular vivid nightmares, and imagination are why I write.
Chris Mentillo
#54. I write because I don't know why I write.
Marty Rubin
#55. That's why I write; to bear the world as it crumbles.
Gunter Kunert
#56. To me, an intellectual is a person who is primarily interested in ideas. What I am is an aesthete, a person who is primarily interested in beauty. That's why I write about art.
Terry Teachout
#57. I was asked once why I write poetry. I said, why do you breath?
Shannon Lynette
#58. People ask me why I write. I write to find out what I know.
Virginia Woolf
#59. I think a lot of people think that my parents' deaths is why I write such sad songs, but that's not true. Those songs may just be the woman I am.
Shelby Lynne
#60. If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.
Jean Sibelius
#61. 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
#62. If I were a woman. I need to be loved a great deal. My great problem is to be loved more, and that's why I write.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#63. For some the truth is too painful to hear. For others, it's a healing balm. This is why I write - to heal.
Kathleen M. Rodgers
#64. Sometimes people ask why I'm so willing to give out #free copies of my books and the answer is pretty simple. Money is not why I write.So why would I keep someone from enjoying that because they can't afford my book? If your in the arts for money your picking the wrong job.
Adam Snowflake
#65. I believe in hope, in what is something called "radical hope." I believe there is hope for all of us, even amid the suffering. And that's why I write fiction, probaby. It's my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to buld a fire in the darkness.r
John Green
#66. You are the best of us. We are the best of you. What becomes of us will, inevitably, become of you. That is why you should care. That is why I write.
I end this chapter, then, with broken silence, broken vows, broken trust. Our secrets are yours now; I pray you use them well.
Donna Boyd
#67. People often ask why I write romance. It's because I believe in heroes and heroines who, after fighting their way through often-formidable obstacles, are rewarded with a happy ending. When the story's over, their future is just beginning and I really like that idea.
Debra Cowan
#68. I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
Edward Abbey
#69. The military is a very cool world to write about. I went down to Ft. Benning, Ga., for military training, and I learned a lot about soldiers and officers and why they joined up and what their life has been like.
David Baldacci
#70. You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books? I say 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?
Kurt Vonnegut
#71. When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I'm very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don't see how they'll survive - why don't we just all go to the movies or watch television.
Kazuo Ishiguro
#72. 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
#73. But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?
Logan Pearsall Smith
#74. People come to L.A. because they're chasing that dream of a better life. That's why I came here, because I thought it would be a place where I would find other people like me; people who wanted to write, people who had a dream of being something else. And that proved to be true.
Robert Crais
#75. A question I've thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.
Gabrielle Zevin
#76. If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet.
Laurie Halse Anderson
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. Now, Sophia, would you care to tell me why you're here by the pond instead of reporting to your next class?'
'I'm experiencing some teenage angst, Mrs. Casnoff,' I answered. 'I need to, like, write in my journal or something.
Rachel Hawkins
#80. I'm kind of concerned about 'Ego & Hubris' because I'm thinking that people will read it and maybe even be entertained by it, but at the end of it, you know, they'll wonder, 'Why did this guy write this? What was the point of it?'
Harvey Pekar
#81. So, I was always frustrated having to write and having to cut things. Why should you have to cut anything?
Ted Nelson
#82. 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
#83. There seems to be a great propensity in this business to write tear-jerkers, 'You-left-me' songs. I thought, 'Why don't I count my blessings by looking at what I have?' I'm pretty much an optimistic guy.
Jerry Jeff Walker
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. Every time I make a mistake with a company, I write it out and try to figure out why it happened.
Garrett Camp
#87. My characters are quite as real to me as so-called real people; which is one reason why I'm not subject to what is known as loneliness. I have plenty of company.
William S. Burroughs
#88. Publishing a short story can sometimes feel like shouting into the dark ... your words come out, and then nothing ... but I don't think that's why I tend to write novels rather than stories.
Alice McDermott
#89. If something happened where I couldn't write music anymore, it would kill me. It's not just a job. It's not just a hobby. It's why I get up in the morning.
Hans Zimmer
#90. I never try to convey a message, I just want to tell a story. Why that story in particular? I have no idea, but I have learned to surrender to the muse. I become obsessed with a theme or with certain stories; they haunt me for years, and finally, I write them.
Isabel Allende
#91. 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
#92. God knows why - no pun intended - but every time I write a song, I feel a need to touch on religion.
Martin Gore
#93. Unfortunately in the matter of Speech Defects, when so much depends on the temperament and individuality, a case can always be produced that can prove you are wrong. That is why I won't write a book [Lionel Logue concluded]
Mark Logue
#94. Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry.
Ennio Morricone
#95. I only write when I'm angry or sad, so because that's when I just have to write ... If I'm having a good time and I'm happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I'm doing to go and write at the piano?
Fiona Apple
#96. You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.
Oscar Wilde
#97. 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
#98. Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can't I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening - where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I'd like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.
Katherine Mansfield
#99. Whenever I write a dramatic poem I can't understand why the characters should ever want to be anything but poets themselves.
Saul Bellow
#100. I used to be opposed to collaboration, and that's probably why the music in the past wasn't as good. Writing with other people, especially the great writers that I've had the privilege to write with, it activates something in your mind that you wouldn't use alone.
Charlie Puth
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