Jacques Derrida Quotes

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.

Art is like breathing for me. If I don't do it, I start to choke.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

I'm just here to do the best that I can do with the music that I make, and I'm not making it for any other reason than I feel like I have to. These ideas have to be created because they're in me, and if I leave them in my head, I'll go crazy.

You could tie my hands to my sides, I suppose, but I have to write. For my own mental health, I need to write.

Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist - except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.

In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do - if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn't feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.

Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.

I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching.

Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.

Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all. It might be better to ask yourself "Why?" afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

If you cut a painter's hands off, he'd still feel the urge to pick up a brush.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it.

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

You don't decide to paint. It's like getting hungry and going to the kitchen to eat. It's a need, not a choice.

Only be an artist if you have no choice!

You don't do pictures because the audience is ready for them. You do them because there's something gnawing at you, something inside.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

I knew that I had to find out more about van Gogh. Even though I was far too young, and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn't I would never write anything else.

Find a way to express what moves you.

To write has to be related to a drive inside.

The only thing that makes me crazier than writing is not writing.