Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

The first audience that you have when writing a book is you.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

I essentially write for myself.

I am always writing to myself.

I was like, 'I have to start writing for myself, to show people what I can do and what my point of view is.'

I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.

I have always written only for myself - to clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening.

Sometimes you have to find the passion. It comes from the inside... Everyone has to find it for themselves.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

I like writing, but I write for self-improvement more than I do for money.

I never think of the reader. I am curious about things; I need to find out, so off I go.

I'm interested in doing everything and anything that I can to squeeze that creativity out of my brain. I guess I'm sort of a performance rat.

Writing is far too hard work to say what someone else wants me to. Serving it as a craft, using it as a way of growing in my own understanding, seems to me to be a beautiful way to live. And if that product is shareable with other people, so much the better.

I used to love writing in my journal.

Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.

Real freedom is creative, proactive, and will take me into new territories. I am not free if my freedom is predicated on reacting to my past.

I think at this point I only write books about questions I really want to figure out. They're indulgences, essentially. I think, 'What would I like to spend five years really thinking about? What could I gain from thinking about for five years?'

It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

I definitely still like writing one-liners, but I also think that I've changed a lot in that I've allowed myself freedom to grow.

If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

I feel my writing comes from a desire to... well, it's motivated by many things, but it's inherently a contradiction in that I'm writing for myself, and it's a very interior journey. On the other hand, I feel that writers do make that interior journey out of a desire to connect.

I think writing a solo play was the most liberating thing I ever did.

The most real dialogue for me is when I am alone, writing.