Marianne Moore Quotes

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

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

One writes in order to feel.

I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else.

Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back again differently, so that everything is used and nothing is lost. Because it's something to do to pass the time until she is old enough to experience the things she writes about.

I need to write to be happy.

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 love writing. I've pursued it with a passion.

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

I want to make words out of life. That's bigger than me. That's as big a creative force as - bigger than, for me, even having children. That felt more accidental - wonderful, but accidental.

Anything that feels like good characters, I am excited to do whether I write it or not. But if I don't find it in the world, I will write it myself.

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.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

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 write because I love doing it.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

It is not a waste to write beautiful prose or poetry for one person's eyes alone!

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

I think what I love most [about writing] is that feeling that you really nailed something. Sometimes with a line you feel that it really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out.

I'm writing for the sake of writing music. Whether it gets heard or not isn't an issue for me. It keeps my own juices going and my mind active.

I write because I can’t sleep.

I have a dark and dreadful secret. I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it.

Pay attention to your passions. They are the key to starting and finishing the book you are meant to write. I don't believe in talent. I believe in passion.

Writing has nothing to do with publishing. Nothing. People get totally confused about that. You write because you have to - you write because you can't not write. The rest is show-business. I can't state that too strongly. Just write - worry about the rest of it later, if you worry at all. What matters is what happens to you while you're writing the story, the poem, the play. The rest is show-business.