There was something I wanted to feel, and I felt it only when I was writing.

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

I write because I cannot NOT write.

When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.

Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

I only write when I'm angry or sad, so because that's when I just have to write... If I'm having a good time and I'm happy and things are going really well, why would I want to stop what I'm doing to go and write at the piano?

we should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. we should write because writing is good for the soul. we should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

you once said to would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing one self to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind...That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.