I used to think that if I had a choice between writing well and living well, I would choose the former. But now I think that's sheer lunacy. Writing weighs so much less, in the great cosmic equation, than living.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.
It's hard to draw clear lines between writing and life and I don't think it is necessary to or necessarily good to.
At least in my case, a very simple, regular, happy life makes for better writing.
Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I've done that my whole life.
For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
The way I live now is that I only write, which means that I'm very poor but very happy. Everything in my life is the way I want it to be.
I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.