Topic: Why People Write Literature

10-second review: Thoughts by some famous authors on why they write literature.

Title: “Why do Writers Create Literature?” Teaching English, How To…. RayS. Xlibris. 2004, p. 380.

Why Do Writers Create Literature?

I think Joseph Conrad expressed the nature of literature perfectly: “My task is by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.” In other words, to realize life. And William Faulkner expresses a similar idea: “The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” The artist is trying to make us see, understand, and appreciate the experience of life.

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