Don DeLillo Quotes

In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

At the typewriter you find out who you are.

Writing has certainly helped me explore about 20,000 versions of my authentic self. I suppose that's what most writers discover if they write long enough: there are a lot of selves roaming around in there.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

I think to the degree writers are serious, there is a greater tendency for them to write to themselves, because they're trying to compose their own thoughts. They are trying to find out what is in their minds, which is the great mystery. Finding out who you are, what is in your head, and what kind of companion you are to yourself in the course of life. I do think people have very profound lives of which they say virtually nothing.

I write to discover what I think.

As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.

You get caught up in a cycle at some point, so I broke the cycle and decided; I'm going to really write a lot of books, because I need to get in touch with that part of myself in order to make more music.

And I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and I knew writing- even writing badly- had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing.

Mostly you write to find out what you have to say.

I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self; in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

I guess I had a suspicion of it my entire life without knowing exactly what it was - knowing that there was something different about me, which I attributed to being an artist. At 11 or 12 I started sort of clarifying for myself. It took a while.

Sometimes I journal three pages, sometimes I journal thirty pages, but I'm writing all the time, and whatever's happening is happening in real time for me.

I would say that I'm finding my voice in more ways than one.

I went to art school, I think it helped me a great deal because it taught me who I am.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.