Personal Writing Quotes

For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.

I aspire to write what are called 'familiar essays.' They begin in the personal and end in the universal. It's not for me to say if I have been successful at it. But that is the hope.

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

If the stuff you're writing is not for yourself, it won't work.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

Writing is extremely personal, and that's the joy of it for me.

I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone's scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that's how I write.

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

Writing my own diary is the best form of remembrance, but only for my own use. I need these notes; it's like an impulse.

You have to write about what's inside you. If I have to get something out, I'll do it.

Really unfiltered personal writing is cool to me. I'm like, 'How did you show that to everyone?'

I think the word 'blog' is an ugly word. I just don't know why people can't use the word 'journal.'

I'm just not that comfortable writing so much about myself.

If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others...become an author.

I do write, but for now I am keeping it all in the desk drawer. I have always written. The only book that I have published was "Revolution," during the election campaign, a book that contains both personal and political chapters. I have never been happy with what I have written, including three novels that, from my point of view, are incomplete.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

I have no conceit as a writer; in fact, I find it very difficult to start writing about sculpture generally & my aims in particular.

When I go back and reread the stuff, I'm always floored by how deeply personal and revealing it actually is.

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it.

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up.

Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.

The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how 'Beyond This Dark House' appeared.

I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.