“Most of today’s best never expected to be widely read but wrote anyway. They write not because they think that a writer is something somebody like them really ought to be, but because they can do nothing else without betraying their own spirit. They write because if they don’t get the words out, they would be eaten away from the inside. They write because they have no choice.”
Penny Laurie, “Why I Write” in Overland, no 216 (2014), 3-9.