"We write for the same reason that..." - Quote by Maya Angelou
We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That's why we paint, that's why we dare to love someone - because we have the impulse to explain who we are.
More by Maya Angelou
“My mother raised me, and then freed me.”
“I'm sorry to say that when some people get to age 50, they say, "Well, that's the end, I'll never have to do sex again." They lay down first and get up last! But in your sixties, everything is sweeter. You have more time.”
“I'm always disappointed when people don't live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.”
More on Self Expression
“one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.”
“When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.”
“An author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression.”
More on Writing
“You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”
“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”
“Poetry makes its own pertinence, and a single stanza outweighs a book of prose.”