Writing as a Way of Life Quotes

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Nothing can be as astounding as life. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the sole consolation.

I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it.

Writing isn't a job so much as a compulsion. I've been writing since I was very young because for some strange reason, I must write, and also because when I write, I feel more alive and closer to the world than when I'm not writing.

For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live.

I almost never write because I want something from my audience. Almost everything I've ever written, I've written because I feel like I have to write this or I'll die. Like, this has to come out of me.

I didn't really choose to write; I more or less fell into it.

I'm a storyteller, and everyone in this family expresses themselves through writing to get through life's milestones.

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

I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.

I write because I actually enjoy writing. It's a plus and a fringe benefit that, you know, I can actually provide for my family and, you know, a few people know my name - that's great.

What I really, really love is writing. If I can just write and make a really nice living out of that, why would I change that?

Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling.

It's absolutely essential to my life. I don't know what I would do if I didn't write.

If your way of life is writing, then everything that happens becomes a sentence.

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

I lived to write, and wrote to live.

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

Even if someone doesn't like it, or just likes it for me, storytelling has been the one true love story of my entire life.

I'm one of the writers that would die if I didn't say what I needed to say. For me, it's a matter of survival to write.

I'm not someone who from a young age imagined myself being a writer or had dreams of being a novelist or anything like that, but I was always very driven by ideas and by values, and that is the reason I got into journalism.

I write based on how I feel.

I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

I've known since I was 12 that I wanted to write. My father was a teacher, and there were so many books around, it seemed natural to pick them up.