“I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. I write in a solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent. I write to remember. I write to forget.”
“I write because I believe in words. I write because I do not believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox. I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in sand. I write because it belongs to the force of the moon: high tide, low tide. I write because it is the way I take long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness.”
“I write as ritual. I write because I am not employable. I write out of my inconsistencies. I write because then I do not have to speak. I write with the colors of memory. I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as a witness to what I imagine.”
“I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient we are. I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.”
✍️ Terry Tempest Williams, from ‘A Letter to Deb Clow’, published in Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert.
“The question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey.”
“I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone.”
“I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words.”
“I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – as in a dream – can’t quite get to.”
“I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”
✍️ Orhan Pamuk, from My Father’s Suitcase.
My answer after reading this: "I write because I don't have a sandbox to play in anymore."
The reasons were simply wonderful. Good for thought. Food for writing!
But I have to mention I really loved your photo of the desolate edge with moonlight. Thoughts of what lights mean to us; the streetlights lighting our path, the office light to show someone is working and getting things done and is there somehow taking care of things, the distant speck of light on the horizon to say that there is somewhere to get to in the blackness. But the moonlight! The moonlight is somehow within as well as riding high. It feels like magic and deep connection to the universe - belonging with something spectacular.
A beautiful portrait of lights!