Suzanne Vega Quotes

Sometimes I have a feeling that I just can't get rid of. Sometimes there's an experience that I want to write about that I have to get off my chest. Sometimes there are some words that appeal to you.

The ideas for my books come about in two ways. There can be an intellectual idea that seems to be the reason for writing the book. [...] The other motive is unconscious. There is something deeply psychological and emotional that draws me to the material in the first place.

You aren't really writing about what you did; you're writing about how you feel.

Something that you feel will find its own form.

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.

To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.

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.

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.

I find that I end up liking songs if I really have an idea of something I wat to write about-some problem in my life or something I want to work through; if I don't have something like that at the root of the song, then I think I end up not caring about it as much. I gravitate towards some kind of concept or idea or situation that I want to write about. Very often I have to write, rewrite and come at it from an opposite angle...and I end up writing the opposite song that I thought I was going to write.

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.

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.

One writes in order to feel.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.

I'm inspired by whatever I see, feel, hear about, watch on the TV...anything. It can be something that I really need to get off my chest so I write or something a friend is going through which gets my thoughts going.

I don't really care about how good a song is, I only want them to reflect what I felt when I was writing them

I feel like with music there's so much ego rooted in expressing your thoughts and your experiences with it.

You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.

What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write. ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments.

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

I just want to start writing, whether or not any of it is useable or marketable.

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it

When you're in love with the work, the energy comes more naturally. You want to wake up in the morning to write more material, or to go on stage and give every shred of emotion you have.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.