Adages Quote by Jennifer Egan

The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want…

— Julia Glass

'Write what you know' works, but it's limiting. Write what fascinates you. Write what you can't stop thinking about.

— Brian Koppelman

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

— Patricia Hampl

It’s not just the adage ‘write what you know,’ it’s about gathering up all of the knowledge and experience you’ve collected up to now…

— Sarah Kay

I write to discover what I know.

— Flannery O'Connor

I don't set out to write something. I more just write, and later on, I discover what it's about.

— Mitski

I write about what I know.

— Shelby Lynne

Ultimately, you can only ever write what you know. It's logically and philosophically impossible to write what you don't know.

— Colum McCann

For me, writing is a way of finding out about things I didn't know before I began writing.

— Alejandro Zambra

We don't write what we know. We write what we wonder about.

— Richard Peck

People ask me why I write. I write to find out what I know.

— Virginia Woolf

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

— Gail Godwin