I write to discover what I think.

I write to find out what I think.

Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

We write to find out what we know and what we want to say.

I write to find out what I'm talking about.

We write to discover what we think.

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

Like most writers, I tend to find out what I feel on a subject by writing about it. It is how we interpret the world, how we make sense of it.

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

If I want to understand what moves me, what confuses me, what pains me — everything that makes me react, in short — I have to put it into words.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings.