Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money.

Molière

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think of what to do with the long winter evenings.

Quentin Crisp

You write because you want to be read.

William Styron

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.

James Baldwin

You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you.

Bret Easton Ellis

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can’t help it.

Leo Rosten

Each of us is like a desert, and a literary work is like a cry from the desert, or like a pigeon let loose with a message in its claws, or like a bottle thrown into the sea. The point is: to be heard—even if by one single person.

François Mauriac

One goes on writing partly because it is the only available way of earning a living. It is a hard way and highly competitive. My heart drops into my bowels when I enter a bookshop and see how fierce the competition is. But one pushes on because one has to pay bills.

Anthony Burgess

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherazade, in order not to die. It’s one of the oldest urges of mankind. It’s a way of stalling death.

Carlos Fuentes

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others’ minds.

Alfred Kazin

Write to register history.

Isabel Allende

Curiosity urges you on—the driving force.

John Dos Passos

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us. That is also why we pretend to be hard-boiled, saying things like “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money” (Samuel Johnson). Not true. No one but a blockhead ever wrote except for love.… You must do it for love. If you do it for money, no money will ever be enough, and eventually you will start imitating your first successes, straining hot water through the same old teabag. It doesn’t work with tea, and it doesn’t work with writing.

Erica Jong

It is the deepest desire of every writer, the one we never admit or even dare to speak of: to write a book we can leave as a legacy. And although it is sometimes easy to forget, wanting to be a writer is not about reviews or advances or how many copies are printed or sold. It is much simpler than that, and much more passionate. If you do it right, and if they publish it, you may actually leave something behind that can last forever.

Alice Hoffman

It is immoral not to tell.

Albert Camus