Top 39 Why Writers Write Quotes
#1. 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
#3. Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel
Joan Didion
#4. That's why writers write - to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.
Tarryn Fisher
#5. Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.
Burt Ward
#6. A writer of any merit does not worry about being accepted everywhere. He must write to inspire, to change for the better or to challenge the status quo!
Avijeet Das
#7. Why do writers write? Why do actors act? Why do painters paint? It doesn't pay much, unless you're very successful. It's who we are.
Lori Lesko
#8. 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
#9. If you want to know why all writers are a little crazy read 'The Midnight Disease' by Alice W. Flaherty. She talks about the drive to write, writer's block, and the creative brain. I know what's wrong with me!
Dorothea Benton Frank
#10. Writers have opinions - that, in part, is why they write. Therefore they have strong likes and dislikes.
Frank Delaney
#11. Write the book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
Hilary Mantel
#12. Why do we write?
"To make suffering endurable
To make evil intelligible
To make justice desirable
and . . . to make love possible
Roger Rosenblatt
#13. Writers, naturally, dream of becoming authors. Authors dream of writing a bestseller. Bestselling authors want to write more bestsellers. And everyone hopes for big prizes. Why? Because we believe in magic. Publisher's Weekly magazine, Dec. 12, 2011
Amy Hill Hearth
#14. You write five different things, and none of them work, and then suddenly something does, and you ask yourself, 'Why did that last one work?' I think that's the way the artistic mind works. All writers and artists of all kinds often don't know why things work.
Gilbert Morris
#15. Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.
Erica Jong
#16. The writer doesn't write for the reader. He doesn't write for himself, either. He writes to serve ... something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness - those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.
Joy Williams
#17. William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
Jennifer Haigh
#18. If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, 'You're out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?' But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.
Edward Hirsch
#19. Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren't satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.
Roman Payne
#21. In that moment, Dan was reminded why he wanted to write in the first place. It was the same reason anybody does anything
to impress women.
(Jeremy Goodwin, Sports Night)
Aaron Sorkin
#22. Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self; in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one.
John Lahr
#23. 'American Playhouse' is very supportive of writers. That's really why writers like to write for 'American Playhouse' for very little money. They care about making your play, your script, not some network production. We're treated like playwrights, not like fodder for some machine.
Terrence McNally
#24. Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.
Margaret Atwood
#25. That is its sole law: everything has to submit to form. If any of literature's other elements are stronger than form, such as style, plot, theme, if any of these take control over form, the result is poor. That is why writers with a strong style often write poor books.
Karl Ove Knausgard
#26. Life baffles me most days. Maybe that's why I write. To try and make sense of it all.
Christy Hall
#27. 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
#28. But I don't really write to honor the past. I write to investigate, to try to figure out what happened and why it happened, knowing I'll never really know. I think all the writers that I admire have this same desire, the desire to bring order out of chaos.
Horton Foote
#29. Why my interest in writers? Well, I'm one, and many of my friends are writers. I know what it's like to write. I'm interested in the creative process. I'm fascinated by the disparity between who we are on the outside, and what we have bubbling away inside us.
Eric Brown
#30. There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.
Umberto Eco
#31. I am as interested in seeing what happens to my characters as any reader; that is why I tell kids that writers write for the same reason readers read - to find out the end of the story.
Ann Turner
#32. If you've ever wondered why some writers who, in your humble opinion, don't write as well as you do yet are rich and famous while you struggle onward, this is the reason. They are great directors.
Larry Brooks
#33. Why do writers, say, give up a job in economics and decide to write poetry? Or, why do they give up a job in a bank and decide to paint, like Krishan Khanna? They want to convey something.
Vikram Seth
#34. 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
#35. Isn't that why all writers write? To inspire their readers?
Adam Langer
#36. It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.
Rachel Bloom
#37. Writers and learners will write better and learn more if they understand the "why" of what they are studying.
William Zinsser
#38. I do not follow any tradition. I may stand at the beginning of one.
Avijeet Das
#39. All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
Erica Jong
