Writing as a Process Quotes

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

It's become fashionable these days to say that the writer writes because he is not whole, he has a wound, he writes to heal it, but who cares if the writer is not whole; of course the writer is not whole, or even particularly well.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.

If I don't feel like writing today or for a few days, I don't. And I don't think about it. It is not an obligation-it is the greatest privilege.

Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn't something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.

I have never sought the reason why I write.

You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

If I didn't write my soul would dry up and die.

My mother always told me if you write about life, you will always be in the game. Just don't write songs... write life. I decided to take her up on that.

I never want kids to walk away after a school presentation and say, 'I met a writer today.' I want them to say, 'I am a writer.'

I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to.

I keep writing because it is deeply pleasurable to me.

I feel a burden if I don't write.

I believe in the verb, not the noun - I am not a writer, but someone compelled to write.

I think I'm drawn to writing about something which feels intense and important.

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

I have relaxed into my persona as an author, although I used to fight that.

It's hard to draw clear lines between writing and life and I don't think it is necessary to or necessarily good to.