Why do we write?

We...write to heighten our own awareness of life...We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection...We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth...to expand our world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely...When I don't write I feel my world shrinking. I feel I lose my fire, my color.

--Anais Nin

The Diary of Anais Nin, v. 5