“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.”
February 1954 The Diary of Anaïs Nin Vol. 5 (1947-1955), as quoted in Woman as Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 38
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.
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Anaïs Nin 278
writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903–1977Related quotes

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
The Controller, Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 17
Variant: People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.
Source: Brave New World (1932)

Quote from Derain's letter to Maurice de Vlaminck, c. 1906; as cited in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by Cleo Nisse and Francesca Whitlum-Cooper http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 5

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

"Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion" (1728).
1720s
Source: 1965 - 1995, Bravura', Per Kirkeby, (1982), chapter 'Klee and the Vikings', p. 83