Pat Conroy quote: “Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.”

“I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter II: "Autobiography", page 27 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=45&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

“I do not know how to write or speak but only to paint and draw. Look at what I have done. Whether I have succeeded in explaining myself or not, in any case, if you do not understand my work, through your fault or mine, I can do no more.”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

Marcelle Marquet, Marquet Fernand Hazan Editions, Paris 1955, p. 6; as quoted in 'Appendix – Marquet Speaks on his Art', in "Albert Marquet and the Fauve movement, 1898-1908", Norris Judd, published 1976, - translation Norris Judd - Thesis (A.B.)--Sweet Briar College, p. 116

“All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I love to write and I assure you I write regularly… But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”

Jerome David Salinger (1919–2010) American writer

Interview in The Baton Rouge Advocate (1980), as quoted in "J.D. Salinger, author of 'Catcher in the Rye,' dies" in The Washington Post (28 January 2010) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012803177.html

“I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

“Now I must, I suppose, explain why I have been writing this account. […] I have written to disclose myself to myself, and I am writing now because I will, I know, sometime read what I am now writing and wonder. Perhaps by the time I do, I will have solved the mystery of myself, or perhaps I will no longer care to know the solution.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Fiction, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus", Orbit 10 (1972)

“I was completely bowled over by this, not having been able to explain how Whitman came to write “Song of Myself,” which is unlike anything not only in American literature, but unique in all the world. The parallels to it are mystical literature.”

Karl Shapiro (1913–2000) Poet, essayist

Paris Review interview (1986)
Context: Whitman to me is the most fascinating of American poets. Whitman started to write the great poetry from scratch after he had written all that junk for newspapers, the sentimental lyrical poems. All of a sudden he wrote Leaves of Grass. When I was teaching at the University of Nebraska, my friend James Miller was chairman of the English Department. He wrote the first book attempting to make a parallel between the structure of Leaves of Grass and the steps of the mystical experience as in St. John of the Cross. I was completely bowled over by this, not having been able to explain how Whitman came to write “Song of Myself,” which is unlike anything not only in American literature, but unique in all the world. The parallels to it are mystical literature. Miller tried to show that there was actual evidence for this kind of experience, which evidently happens at a particular moment in someone’s life. … When I saw the negative reaction to Whitman with the great ruling critics of the time, I couldn’t believe it. Eliot never really gave up hammering away on Whitman, neither did Pound. Although Pound makes little concessions. Whitman, you know, didn’t have any influence in this country until Allen Ginsberg came along.

“MGR has been a great influence in my life, I don’t deny that. But now I am my own person. I have evolved. Hereafter, I am responsible only for myself. Never again will anybody influence me to such an extent that all my thoughts and actions and statements are influenced and made in a particular way just because someone else wants it that way.”

Jayalalithaa (1948–2016) Indian politician and actress

Source: In an interview to Saavy magazine. The Life And Times Of Jayalalitha Ajith Pillai, A.S. Panneerselvan http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?205450, 04 May 1998.

“I would keep writing even without the eventual possibility of glory. Really, with writing, the idea that I was going to be able to support myself was a long shot. I’m living off my writing now, without grants or a part time job, and it feels so tenuous. It could go downhill tomorrow, you know? I was writing before I thought it was even a real possibility to support myself with my writing, and I’ll keep writing after it becomes clear that it isn’t a real possibility after all. Not because I “must write” or because it’s “in my blood” or anything poetic like that. Or maybe those are just fancy ways of describing this certainty I have that all of my worth is wrapped up in my writing. From very young it seemed to me that writing was the only thing I did that was worthwhile. That had a chance of lasting. So, my work is something I have always given priority. The rest of my life can be falling apart, and it often seems to be, and I still take the time to work on the comic, or short stories. I am always moving forward with my writing. In a way I do treat everything else as a support system for the writing, but it isn’t really. And by treating it that way, I tend to neglect it.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

Interview with Hamilton Chu.
I Am Other People

“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On why he decided against writing proprietary software; quoted in Free as in Freedom : Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software' (2002) by Sam Williams http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html
2000s

“Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.”

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