Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still

It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

I don't write songs, play music and tour, really, for anyone else but myself. It's something that I have to do to stay alive.

When a real artist creates something, it has to be a necessity, the only way he can say something.

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.

If I'm not writing, I'm not fully living. It has become the essential element that defines who I am.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.

Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write [create]? Dig into yourself for a deep answer.

All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within, their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out.

Actually, when I write, there is a feeling of necessity, of something that is stronger than myself that demands that I must write as I write.

I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you must write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.

I feel a passion for what we're trying to do.I mean, why does somebody who's old who's a writer keep writing? Because that's who they are.

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

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.

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

I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs.

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

I have to write. I have to be an artist.

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.

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 started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there

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.