Harriet Martineau Quotes

But I really believe that you don't do music because you want to, you do it because you have to.

The best books come from someplace inside. You don't write because you want to, but because you have to.

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.

I don't write these stories for the rewards that come back to me. I write them because I have to write them. It's a sickness on some level. It's a compulsion.

Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

I wanted it so badly that there was no choice. It's like something in your blood that you have to do.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

When something possesses me, I go ahead and do it.

To me that's what art is about - when you don't really have any control over your desires to do it.

It's like there's this boldness that I have where I'm driven by something that I can't name.

When you receive a script and it leaps out at you and it's breathing with its own heartbeat - I suppose when you read something like that it's not a choice of whether you do it or don't. It feels like it chooses you, so you just do it.

Only be an artist if you have no choice!

I was talking to so many teenagers for so long that I started to feel like, 'I have my own story I want to tell, and I need to do it soon.' So I started to store away pieces that eventually became 'Speech & Debate.' I felt this burning need to write it while I still had not only all of the ideas but the passion to do it.

What I am looking for is not happiness. I work solely because it is impossible for me to do anything else.

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

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

You don't chose your passion, your passion choses you

Rock and roll isn't a career or hobby - it's a life force ... it's just something I have to do.

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.

A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is captive and driven by his daimon.

[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.

Passion... it lies in all of us. Sleeping, waiting, and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir, open its jaws, and howl. It speaks to us, guides us... passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?

I always tell people is really make sure you know why you want to do it. For me, I didnt make a conscious decision like "Oh I want to be a singer", it was like I grew up around it, I was singing because it was just natural for me to sing.