Why We Write Quotes

• We all have a lot of people inside us, yet we get to live only one life. Fiction lets us slip into someone else’s skin, so to speak. That’s why we read novels, and also why we write them - to experience more life, through imagination.

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  Steven Saylor

  Writing   People   Skins  

  "MysteryPeople Q&A with Steven Saylor". Interview with Scott Butki, mysterypeople.wordpress.com. March 31, 2014.

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• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

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  Anais Nin

  Love   Writing   Heart  

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• I've never known a writer who didn't feel ill at ease in the world. We all feel unhoused in some sense. That's part of why we write. We feel we don't fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we're not of it. You don't need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world.

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  Andrea Barrett

  Moving   Home   Writing  

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• I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories likes these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.

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  Lloyd Jones

  Memories   Moving   Writing  

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• We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.

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  Neil Gaiman

  Growing Up   Kindness   Lying  

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• When you look into the eyes of your people out there that came to see you, that's when it's like, 'Yep, this is what it's all about.' This is why we don't sleep, and this is why we write songs and try to be the best. This moment right here onstage.

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  Luke Bryan

  Song   Writing   Sleep  

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• The imagination can be dangerous. It can change the world. And that is why we write.

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  Meg Rosoff

  Writing   Imagination   Why We Write  

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