Quotes & Sayings About Freedom To Write

If you've never experienced something and don't know how to write about it, then make it a fantasy book. It gives you a lot of freedom. — B.A. Gabrielle

It was a long time before I realized that you don't have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to write badly, to get it wrong, stop looking over your own shoulder. — Abigail Thomas

It was easy enough to write a sentence, but if you were going to create a work of art, the way Melville had, each sentence needed to fit perfectly with the one that preceded it, and the unwritten one that would follow. And each of these sentences needed to square with the ones on either side, so that three became five and five became seven, seven became nine, and whichever sentence he was writing became the slender fulcrum on which the the whole precarious edifice depended. That sentence could contain anything, anything, and so it promised the kind of absolute freedom that, to Affenlight's mind, belonged to the artist and the artist alone. — Chad Harbach

I like to read and write because it is the ONLY thing that takes my mind off of the real world and my spinning worries. It is a time I can be free of anxiety, worry, and stress. When my life gets hectic I HAVE to read and write or I'll drown. — Shandy L. Kurth

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen. — Tom Stoppard

A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom. I pity the poor slaves, they're nought but airy mist, a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down; it's only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees. Today I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Freedom is the right to sow what you want. It's the right to make boots or shoes, it's the right to bake bread from the grain you've sown and to sell it or not sell it as you choose. It's the same whether you're a locksmith or a steelworker or an artist - freedom is the right to live and work as you wish and not as you're ordered to. But there's no freedom for anyone - whether you write books, whether you sow grain, or whether you make boots." That night Ivan Grigoryevich lay — Vasily Grossman

Compared with the usual fate of humans, we who are engaged in preservation work, daily in contact with what we most like and admire, are fortunate indeed. As I write this, I have just returned from a gathering of men and women in the museum and historic-house field. What cheerful, rapt faces! What intensity of interest! What freedom of discussion, where difference of opinion about procedure was taken for granted and met with a smile. Do you really think this is common experience in the workaday world? Are you unaware of the fact that most people often feel that they are traveling the wrong road, and bitterly conclude that it is too late to return to a distant fork? — Freeman Tilden

As much as I'm drawn to writing about teenage girls, I like the idea of having the freedom to branch out and write about different ages, for different ages. — Ann Brashares

People don't write about kids; you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce. — Michael Ondaatje

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want. — Bonnie McKee

I am very grateful for the success, because it has given me the freedom to write without pressure, in my own way, and has enabled me to maintain my family and educate my children and grandchildren, as well as to create a Foundation to empower women and girls. — Isabel Allende

You know what Hans told me last week?" she says as I open the door of my fitting room. "He told me to write down a list of everything I wanted to say about that women-and then tear it up. He said I'd feel a sense of freedom."
"Oh right," I say interestedly. "So what happened?"
"I wrote it all down," says Laurel. "And then I mailed it to her! — Sophie Kinsella

I was inspired to write this book by those who are sceptical of the power of freedom to change the world. — Natan Sharansky

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent. — Stephen Spender

Freedom to speak and write about public questions is as important to the life of our government as is the heart to the human body. In fact, this privilege is the heart of our government. If that heart be weakened, the result is debilitation; if it be stilled, the result is death. — Hugo Black

Freedom of discussion is in England little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury of twelve shopkeepers think it expedient should be said or written. — A. V. Dicey

There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken - until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom - until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead - until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers - until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.
In this creed there will be but one word - Liberty. — Robert G. Ingersoll

I like to jot down ideas on the back of envelopes and to recognise the potential value in small things. I also like the freedom to think without feeling compelled to write too early. Stories are often better if we can hold back and get to know the characters and the sounds of language. — Nick Earls

Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write. — Hugo Black

People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. — Martin Amis

If something depressing is happening, that's gold. That's the best possible situation you could be in. But if that doesn't happen, you just have to make up stuff - it's more fun because you have more freedom with what you can write about. You can invent characters and situations. It's actually easier. — Eliot Paulina Sumner

I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart's content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

I write. I give intimate private names to an external and foreign world. In a sense, I make it mine. In a sense, I return from feeling exiled and foreign to feeling at home. By doing so, I am already making a small change in what appeared to me earlier as unchangeable. Also, when I describe the impermeable arbitrariness that signs my destiny - arbitrariness at the hands of a human being, or arbitrariness at the hands of fate - I suddenly discover new nuances, subtleties. I discover that the mere act of writing about arbitrariness allows me to feel a freedom of movement in relation to it. That by merely facing up to arbitrariness I am granted freedom - maybe the only freedom a man may have against any arbitrariness: the freedom to put your tragedy into your own words. The freedom to express yourself differently, innovatively, before that which threatens to chain and bind one to arbitrariness and its limited, fossilizing definitions. — David Grossman

Look, Mrs. McGillicuddy, it's not my fault your son jumped out a dorm room window on Christmas eve. I've written over fifty books as a Columbia professor, all right? You don't do that by holding hands with every at-risk undergraduate who says he's homesick, or he's turning gay, or the dog ate his term paper. I write about Lincoln, and freedom, and great ideas. I don't always have time for students. It's like Dean Martin used to say: if you want to talk, go to a priest.
Hey
what's the gun for? — Eric Foner

Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.
The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength: that page will teach you to write. — Annie Dillard

The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause. — E.B. White

I enjoyed the freedom they gave me - to write about almost any damned thing that came into my mind, whether it was crime, science fiction, western, fantasy or sports. — Norbert Davis

Liberals really, really, really like to talk about how open-minded they are - a lot. And yet, today, there are few doing more to suppress the individual's freedom to act, think, say, and write what they want in the United States than so-called progressives. — Eric Bolling

What is the point of being educated, of learning to read and write, if you are just going to carry on like a machine? But that is what your parents want, and it is what the world wants. The world does not want you to think, it does not want you to be free to find out, because then you would be a dangerous citizen, you would not fit into the established pattern. A free human being can never feel that he belongs to any particular country, class, or type of thinking. Freedom means freedom at every level, right through, and to think only along a particular line is not freedom. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

As far as I'm concerned, freedom is the most important thing to creativity. You should feel free to write in whatever way, whatever language, feels comfortable to you. — Edward Hirsch

The First Amendment guarantees liberty of human expression in order to preserve in our Nation what Mr. Justice Holmes called a "free trade in ideas." To that end, the Constitution protects more than just a man's freedom to say or write or publish what he wants. It secures as well the liberty of each man to decide for himself what he will read and to what he will listen. The Constitution guarantees, in short, a society of free choice. — Potter Stewart

I was pretty happy with how my career had gone, mainly because of the enormous freedom I've had to write what I've wanted to write. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a writer. — Karen Joy Fowler

One of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of "french fries" to "freedoom fries" and "french toast" to "freedom toast". It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles. — Johnny Depp

He was back at the point of departure, at the place that filled writers with dread and excitement, for this was where they must decide which new story to tackle of the many floating in the air, which plot to bind themselves to for a lengthy period; and they had to choose carefully, study each option calmly ... because there were dangerous stories, stories that resisted being inhabited, and stories that pulled you apart while you were writing them ... At that moment, before reverently committing the first word to paper, he could write anything he wanted, and this fired his blood with a powerful sense of freedom, as wonderful as it was fleeting, for he knew it would vanish the moment he chose one story and sacrificed all the others. — Felix J. Palma

I often wonder if I had the complete freedom to not have to write, if I would write. That's the one mystery that I hope I get to experience. — Nick Tosches

I actually worked in the general market for many years writing steamy historical romance, and I had more freedom in the Christian market than I ever did in the general market to write about any issue that I needed to write about. — Francine Rivers

Delilah Bard never read many books.
The few she did had pirates and thieves, and always ended with freedom and the promise of more stories. Characters sailed away. They lived on. Lila always imagined people that way, a series of intersections and adventures. It was easy when you moved through life--through worlds--the way she did. Easy when you didn't care, when people came onto the page and walked away again, back to their own stories, and you could imagine whatever you wanted for them, if you cared enough to write it in your head. — V.E Schwab

Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely. — Louise Labe

Freedom. The freedom to be, without limits, to the very best of your ability. The freedom to move without fear or reticence and live your life one leap at a time. The freedom to unbind yourself from all those paths that have been constructed for you by society and find your own way through the obstacles. The freedom to write your own physics, accepting nobody's rules of gravity and space but your own. — Sam A. Patel

Live on, survive, for the earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention.
Your songs are your planets. Live on them but make no home there.
What you write about, you lose. What you sing, leaves you on the wings of song.
Sing against death. Command the wildness of the city.
Freedom to reject is the only freedom. Freedom to uphold is dangerous.
Life is elsewhere. Cross frontiers. Fly away. — Salman Rushdie

All those who write either explicitly or by insinuation against the dignity, freedom, and immortality of the human soul, may so far forth be justly said to unhinge the principles of morality, and destroy the means of making men reasonably virtuous. — George Berkeley

In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it. — John Fusco

I used to be a freelance journalist, so I had to write fast, but I always found writing nonfiction constraining. I like the freedom of fiction, where I get to invent everything, and tidy, conclusive endings are within my control. — Michelle Gagnon

What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be relieved of the burden of brightness. And that is why I no longer write, and why the dark is is my freedom and my happiness. — Mark Strand

We're not mindless golems, designed to think exactly the same thing. To try to suppress those thoughts is no better than slavery, and being free to say what you want, write what you want or draw what you want, as long as it doesn't offend anyone... That's no freedom at all. — T.J. Dixon

Blogging is different from both journal-writing and writing for print. It's more fun than either of those. The freedom to write whatever I want and the unmediated connection with readers are the payoff. — Kate Christensen

I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily. — Joyce Carol Oates

It is always better to write your feeling in GRAPHITE than in INK,
As it's much easier to erase them and start fresh as life does not give the freedom to do so ... .
In INK it takes time to fade away as life does ... . — Sarvesh Murthi .D.D

Books are better than television, the internet, or the computer for educating and maintaining freedom.
Books matter because they state ideas and then attempt to thoroughly prove them. They have an advantage precisely because they slow down the process, allowing the reader to internalize, respond, react and transform. The ideas in books matter because time is taken to establish truth, and because the reader must take the time to consider each idea and either accept it or, if he rejects it, to think through sound reasons for doing so. A nation of people who write and read is a nation with the attention span to earn an education and free society if they choose. — Oliver DeMille

In 1965, I was teaching a seminar on freedom when I told my students that the ultimate freedom lay in casting a dice to decide what to do. They were so shocked and fascinated that I knew I had to write the book. — Luke Rhinehart

All life is an experiment. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment. I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom. Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All good writers inspire me as I have never thought I was any good. As far as a writer who made me think I could do it, it was Henry Miller. Not because I thought he was so simple that I reckoned I could pull it off as well, but it was his freedom and guts that really moved me to want to write all the time. — Henry Rollins

Why do I feel ashamed to use words like democracy and
freedom and brotherhood? They don't have meaning any
more. I have nothing to write about any more. Remember
all that writing I did? I was going to be a great socialist
writer. I can't make sense of a word, a simple word. — Arnold Wesker

To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. — Ma Jian

Freedom's just a word today
Freedom's just a word
When someone takes your word away
It's seldom ever heard
So take a sentence full of things you're not supposed to say
Carry on, but don't write them down or you'll be gone — Stone Sour

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words. — Anna Quindlen

I was a huge fan of video games; I wanted to write something, and I saw the tools at my fingertips to upload a video to my audience, and that's why I'm here today. I think that freedom and the lack of gatekeepers, combined with people's passion, is what really the true spirit of Internet geekdom is about. — Felicia Day

There's never a mistake in the universe. So if your partner is angry, good. If there are things about him that you consider flaws, good, because these flaws are your own, you're projecting them, and you can write them down, inquire, and set yourself free. People go to India to find a guru, but you don't have to: you're living with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom. — Byron Katie

One of Eric's most basic rules is sort of a golden rule for management: Make sure you would work for yourself. If you are so bad as a manager that you as a worker would hate working for you, then you have some work to do. The best tool we have found for this is the self-review: At least once per year, write a review of your own performance, then read it and see if you would work for you. And then, share it with the people who do in fact work for you. This will elicit greater insights than the standard 360-degree review process, because when you are initiating criticism of yourself it gives others the freedom to be more honest. — Eric Schmidt

Mr. Prince, would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?"
"The American Revolution?"
"A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tables of the law and put them where everyone could see them
thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom. — Jerry Pournelle

I found that married life gave me the necessary freedom to follow an ambition which had been with me since childhood; and so I started to write in earnest. — Jean Plaidy

Western man has tried for too many centuries to fool himself that he lives in a rational world. No. There's a story about a man who, while walking along the street, was almost hit on the head and killed by an enormous falling beam. This was his moment of realization that he did not live in a rational world but a world in which men's lives can be cut off by a random blow on the head, and the discovery shook him so deeply that he was impelled to leave his wife and children, who were the major part of his old, rational world. My own response to the wild unpredictability of the universe has been to write stories, to play the piano, to read, listen to music, look at paintings - not that the world may become explainable and reasonable but that I may rejoice in the freedom which unaccountability gives us. — Madeleine L'Engle

...the right to think, to speak, and to write in freedom and without fear is ultimately a more sacred thing than any religion. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything. — Isabel Allende

Love implies great freedom - not to do what you like. But love comes only when the mind is very quiet, disinterested, not self-centered. These are not ideals. If you have no love, do what you will - go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems - you are a dead human being. And without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk; there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. And a mind that is not in a state of love is not a religious mind at all. And it is only the religious mind that is freed from problems, and that knows the beauty of love and truth. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Poetry never makes any money, and so there's no pressure to appeal to an audience. That makes a lot of things about being a poet difficult, but it also means freedom to write whatever you want to write, however you want to write it. — Garth Greenwell

One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

When I write in Italian - this is just the metaphor that came to me immediately, and I really think this is what it is - I feel like I'm writing with my left hand. Because of that weakness, there is this enormous freedom that comes with it. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality. Freedom of speech, freedom of religious thought, and the right to due process for composers, performers and retailers are imperiled if the PMRC and the major labels consummate this nasty bargain. — Frank Zappa

A tight structural form opens possibilities. Take a pattern, an established model or sub-genre, and write to it. In writing, limitation gives freedom — W.G. Sebald

I'm fine here, Lenny. I'm discovering who I am without all my ornaments and accessories. It's quite a slow process, but a very useful one. Everybody ought to do the same at the end of their life. If I had any self-discipline I would beat my grandson to it and write my own memoirs. I have time, freedom, and silence, the three things I never had amidst all the noise of my earlier life. I'm preparing to die." "That won't — Isabel Allende

I'm good with songs I haven't written, if I like them. I'm glad I didn't write any of them. I already know how they go, so I have more freedom with them. I understand these songs. I've known them for 40 years, 50 years, maybe longer, and they make a lot of sense. So I'm not coming to them like a stranger. — Bob Dylan

The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future. — Abigail Scott Duniway

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think ... Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. — David McCullough

The writers who reject tendentiousness and purpose in their work are the very ones who display it in every word they write. I could draw countless examples from the history of literature to show that the more a writer clamours for spiritual freedom, the more tendentious his work is liable to be. — Bjornstjerne Bjornson

When you write by hand, you don't have the excessive freedom of a computer. When I write down something, I have to be serious about it. I have to ask myself, Is this necessary at this point in the book? — Pat Conroy

Creativity is as much about order against freedom; control versus rebellion; organisation against disorder as it is about straightforward imagination. — Carla H. Krueger

I was the first records editor at Rolling Stone, and there were no rules. There was nothing to fall back on as to how do you write about this kind of music, so people were trying absolutely everything with a great sense of freedom and experimentation and success and failure, and a feeling of, My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let's pretend they aren't because we don't want to be intimidated by what somebody might think of what we're saying. — Greil Marcus

Those who write the editorials and those who write the columns, they simply are unaccountable. They're free to impose their cultural politics in the name of freedom of the press. — Jesse Jackson

So many people spend years (and money) studying to be doctors, lawyers, actors, dancers, business executives and scientists - when you're an author, you can be any of these things, and you don't need a degree or certificate; all you need is an imagination, a dream and an open mind. — Rebecca McNutt

I prefer to write and draw in the privacy of my home and with total freedom and then take it to the lion's den. — Frank Miller

That the Op-Ed page is very important in readers' and the nation's perception of the Times, the perception of its editorial positions, and of its implicit editorial positions as expressed by the publisher's choice of people who are given the freedom to write opinion columns. — Daniel Okrent

If I write for myself, I write a song and I bring in the musicians that are best suited to play it. There's a freedom there. — Paul Stanley

I was willing to take on the struggle to establish myself in a new country because I knew that was the price I would have to pay for the freedom to think, speak, and write whatever I pleased. — Ji-li Jiang

What makes for freedom and fluency in the practice of writing? Knowledge of how to write. The same goes for the practice of playing an instrument. It follows that, in the conduct of life, there must be a science to living well. — Epictetus

Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone. — Daphne Du Maurier

The strength of film is its accessibility and immediacy. But the strength of books is that freedom to really depict anything you want because people are going to be reading it in private. So, I'm always trying to write with the immediacy and the constant motion of film but I'm also trying to write with the complete freedom of subject matter that books have. — Chuck Palahniuk

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words. — Patti Smith

Even more secretively, Lincoln took up his pen around this same time to write a deeply felt manifesto of principle that he shared with absolutely no one, certainly not sculptor Thomas Jones, in whose presence he likely composed it. Secret or not, it bracingly confirms Lincoln's steadfast determination to preserve - and ultimately, extend - not only the permanence of the Union, but also its guarantee of liberty. He had thought much about these questions in recent days, pondering concepts that went well beyond the planks of the Republican platform he so often cited. The result was an appeal not just to reason but also to emotion, a heartfelt justification for resisting any compromise that reneged on the original promise of American freedom. — Harold Holzer

No complaining about how hard it is to write, we are all so, so lucky to write, to sit down, inside, and write words on paper. There is no greater freedom, no greater good, nothing that brings more joy. — Isabel Allende

In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible. — Nicole Mones

Be passionate about what you write, believe in your ability to convey timeless ideas, and let no one tell you what what you're capable of. — Christina Westover

I don't have a diary, I don't write things into a diary. I imprint myself into the sky and when the sunlight shines brightly, I can stand under the sun's rays and everything I have imprinted of myself into the sky, I will begin to see again, feel again, remember. And when the wind begins to blow, it blows the details over my face, and I remember everything I left in the sky and see new things being born. I am unwritten. — C. JoyBell C.

Shameless actually good since it gives a kind of freedom. We consider the old, functionless shame destructive. Today, if you have a strong sense of shame you also have a strong desire to overcome it. And that's when you can write. — Karl Ove Knausgard

There will be rebels. They will live in the shadows. They will be the renegade painters, sculptors, poets, writers, journalists, musicians, actors, dancers, organizers, activists, mystics, intellectuals and other outcasts who are willing to accept personal sacrifice. They will not surrender their integrity, creativity, independence and finally their souls. They will speak the truth. The state will have little tolerance of them. They will be poor. The wider society will be conditioned by mass propaganda to write them off as parasites or traitors. They will keep alive what is left of dignity and freedom. Perhaps one day they will rise up and triumph. But one does not live in poverty and on the margins of society because of the certainty of success. One lives like that because to collaborate with radical evil is to betray all that is good and beautiful. It is to become a captive. It is to give up the moral autonomy that makes us human. The rebels will be our hope. — Chris Hedges

One thing about having mostly absent parents that I think was perhaps "good" for the development of my intellect/writing is that I was given almost total freedom to read/write/look at whatever I wanted. I wonder a lot about how my past experiences, particularly my negative childhood (home life and being severely bullied/ostracized throughout school) as formed my/my thoughts/my writing, though I should also note those things were far from the only thing that had an impact on me/my writing. — Marie Calloway

I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak ... I hope every woman who can write will not be silent. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved. — Tara Brach