"Why I Write" - by Great Authors

9. "I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book which I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me."
Thornton Wilder, Conversations with Thornton Wilder

8. "Writing is a form of therapy, yes. One writes to liberate something in oneself."
Milan Kundera, Critical Essays on Milan Kundera

7. "I write to preserve memory. I write what should not be forgotten."
Isabel Allende, Keepers of the Story

6. "I write to make sense of my life."
John Cheever, Cheever: A Life

5. "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
Joan Didion, The Writer on Her Work (Volume 1)

4. "To withdraw myself from myself (oh that cursed selfishness!) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all."
Lord Byron, The Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of His Life, Volume 1

3. "I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in the sand."
Terry Tempest Williams, Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

2. "I write because I love the smell of paper, pen. and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten."
Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors: Essays and a Story

1. "I write for the same reason I breathe — because if I didn't, I would die."
Isaac Asimov, Yours, Isaac Asimov, A Lifetime of Letters

Daily Writing Quote