“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
― Tom Waits
If you write for applause, admiration, or the hollow idol of approval, your words are already dead. They will emerge stillborn, devoid of blood and pulse, a brittle facade of pure expression. True writing is an exorcism, a reckoning—not a plea for validation but a confrontation with one’s own depths.
Bukowski was on to something when he wrote that “when a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.” Ray Bradbury, mimicking this sentiment, writes:
“It is a lie to write in such a way as to be rewarded by money in the commercial market. It is a lie to write in such a way as to be rewarded by fame offered you by some snobbish quasi-literary group in intellectual gazettes.”
Writing—genuine writing—must be born from necessity, from an urgency that aches within and demands release. It is not a performance, a sideshow act for the mob, but a liberation, a breaking free from the silent prison of the self.
In the words of Lev Shestov: “Thus many writers, like gladiators, shed their blood to gratify that modern Caesar, the mob.”
Circumstances and random misfortunes in life are inconsequential to the true writer. If you are destined to write, you will do so in the face of misery, through hunger, despair, and the slow erosion of hope.
Dostoevsky wrote some of his most profound works after surviving a death sentence and imprisonment. Hemingway wrote from the front lines of war and personal chaos. Jean Genet turned a life of crime and imprisonment into surreal, defiant art. Bukowski, in his early years, turned out poems and short stories in roach-infested rooms on the edge of civilization, surviving off a candy bar a day.
The true creator does not wait for ideal conditions. They do not seek haven in comfort or grumble over obstacles and setbacks. Excuses are the refuge of those who lack the fire within, the timid souls who fear the weight of their own words.
But for the one who is truly called to write, there is no choice—only the necessity. The great southern writer Harry Crews captured this sentiment when he wrote:
“I can be hungry, homeless, wet, in debt, fucked up; but if I’m writing, that’s enough.”
To write is to splash meaning onto the arid page of existence, giving form and style to what lies unspoken. It is not enough to permeate the world with more moth-eaten words and cliché sentiments; the world is already drowning in them.
If you are to write, let it be because you must, because you have something original to say, because something vital within you craves the light, because the act of writing itself is as essential as breath.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you have something to say."
Whatever you have to say, strip it of exhibitionism and vanity and let it emerge raw like a final confession—one last revelation hurled into the void.
Below, I’ve compiled a few of my favorite quotes on writing from artists worthy of guidance. I hope you enjoy them.