“I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.”

—  Isaac Asimov

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die." by Isaac Asimov?
Isaac Asimov photo
Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992

Related quotes

Julia Quinn photo

“I didn't think I should die but I did not know how I would Live.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Lost Duke of Wyndham

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that I when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I lived, the breath I breathed.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5, “Rejoining” (p. 286)

Andrew Vachss photo

“When someone asks me, 'Why do you write comics?' I tell them, for the same reason I write editorials, essays, and articles; the same reason I give speeches; the same reason I appear on TV programs, and give interviews. Same message; different forum. There is no universal forum, so the more outreach we can do, the better the chance of forming coalitions.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Borderline, January 2003

Ray Bradbury photo

“Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer
Ron Paul photo

“I didn't write them, I didn't read them at the time, and I disavow them.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Ron Paul Walks Out On CNN Interview http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/ron-paul-and-the-racist-newsletters-fact-checker-biography/2011/12/21/gIQAKNiwBP_blog.html (December 21, 2011)
2010s
Context: Paul: I didn't write them, I disavow them...
Q: So you read them, but didn't do anything.
Paul: I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it ten years after it was written... it's going on twenty years that people have pestered me about this.
Q: Well, wouldn't you say it's a legitimate question?
Paul: When you get the answer, it's legitimate that you sorta take the answer I give. You know what the answer is? "I didn't write them, I didn't read them at the time, and I disavow them."

E.M. Forster photo

“Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 219 (1960)

Bertrand Russell photo

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Orhan Pamuk photo

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite 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 (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Related topics