“A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?”

—  Andrei Tarkovsky

Last update Aug. 22, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he…" by Andrei Tarkovsky?
Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Andrei Tarkovsky55
Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film th… 1932–1986

Related quotes

“I'm really serious about this writing thing. What time I haven't been writing, I've been reading: Thomas Wolfe, if you know who he is. His writing is mostly built about the central character of a writer, himself. Altho it's fiction, it deals with his life and experiences. In my opinion, little as it's worth, he is the greatest writer that has lived, Shakespeare included. He is a genius.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (7 April 1941); p. 11
To Reach Eternity (1989)

Francis Bacon photo

“Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

William Least Heat-Moon photo

“Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he's going or understand what he sees?”

William Least Heat-Moon book Blue Highways

Part Five, Chapter 6.
Blue Highways (1982)

Reinaldo Arenas photo

“The writer has a fundamental responsibility to write well or to write the best he can, because if he doesn’t he’s not a writer. And when a writer writes, he’s always referring to a social and historical context…”

Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990) Cuban poet/novelist/playwright

Source: On a writer’s responsibility in “The Literature of Uprootedness: An Interview with Reinaldo Arenas” https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-literature-of-uprootedness-an-interview-with-reinaldo-arenas in The New Yorker (2013 Dec 5)

Evagrius Ponticus photo

“125. A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

Chapters on Prayer

Annie Dillard photo

“He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

Karl Jaspers photo

“Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process…”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933), p. 146

Samuel Butler photo

“When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Writing for a Hundred Years Hence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Jane Austen photo

“A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Joseph Stalin photo

“Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1912-1927, [Bolshevik Leadership, Correspondence 1912-1927], p. 90
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Related topics