Anne Sexton Quotes

When I started making music, I was like, 'This is something I can believe I was meant to do.'

For years and years I have done the work I was born for.

No, I knew when I was doing theater in New York that this was what I was supposed to be doing.

I've always considered myself lucky that I do not have many passions. There's only one pursuit that I have ever truly loved, and that pursuit is writing. This means, conveniently enough, that I never had to search for my destiny; I only had to obey it.

I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living.

I'm hungry for purpose. I'm looking for still that reason that I bought a guitar and started a band, to fulfill a purpose, to manifest destiny as to who I am and why I am the way I am, and what I do. I think it's still about the music, the song and the story.

One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.

Your career is what you're paid for. Your calling is what you're made for.

The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.

I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

Writing is only the frosting on my cake. I'm whole without it.

Sometimes you just know what you're placed on this earth to do.

I knew at an early age I wanted to act. Acting was always easy for me. I don't believe in predestination, but I do believe that once you get where ever it is you are going, that is where you were going to be.

A job is something we do to get a paycheck and pay our bills. Jobs are legitimate, at times, but work is why we are here in the universe. Work and calling often go together.

The first time I walked on a stage I knew that was what I was created to do. I knew that there was a calling and a sense of purpose in my life that gave me fulfillment and a sense of destiny.

I am motivated to write because it is what I am meant to do. It is not a choice - it is what I am. I did not choose writing - it chose me. And I believe it is necessarily that way. Anyone doing this for some other reason should not be.

I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have found what I am supposed to do and to get to do it.

I know what my dharma is: I'm supposed to be an actor.

I feel like I was born to make music.

Theater was just what I was supposed to do.

I really feel something's missing if I'm not writing.