Alfred Kazin Quotes

Words are my life.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.

To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

Writing gave me the world.

If you took my reading and writing out of my head, I don't know who I would be.

Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.

I think writing gives me creative freedom.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

Writing isn't letters on paper. It's communication. It's memory.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy communicating and connecting.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

I still can't decide which is more fun - reading or writing.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.

Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.

If I walk away from music, I walk away from myself.

I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

I started to write as a child as soon as I could read, or even before, when my mother read me Beatrix Potter at bedtime. Writing seemed to me to be the only sensible way to live and be happy.