These inspirational and practical quotes come from 500+ podcast interviews with hard-working, award-winning, and New York Times bestselling authors in more than 33 U.S. states and five countries. In Book 1, authors share their honest reflections on The Writing Life.

These quotes reveal what it really feels like to be a writer.

Authors quoted include David Baldacci, Therese Anne Fowler, Steve Berry, Lisa Jewell, John Hart, Sophie Cousens, Ron Rash, C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Wylie Cash, Kristy Harvey, Brad Taylor, Charlie Lovett, Judy Goldman, Chris Fabry, Amber Smith, Tracy Clark, John Gilstrap, Kimmery Martin, A.J. Hartley, Clyde Edgerton, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Mark de Castrique, Cathy Pickens, David Joy, and many more.

As the late Anthony Abbott so eloquently says in this book, "Writing is not about writing, necessarily. Writing is about living. And the more deeply and fully you live, the more you are able to write."

There is hope in this book but there is also angst and humility. Case in point is a quote by New York Times bestselling author John Hart, who says that the writing life is so unbelievably wonderful that he feels "deep down that the universe must have plans to take that all away." It makes him work even harder on his next book.The writers quoted in these pages grab for their pens and fire up their computers for the love of writing. They have a common urge to create, to use letters, words, and sentences to tell stories, either about themselves, or others, or about characters they create in their writing chambers. They write for therapy or to understand themselves and the world around them. They write for the sake of writing. They write for publication. They write to be remembered. They write to be heard and understood. And as more than one author says, they write because they can't not write.