"Why I Write" - George Orwell

8. "All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery." (p10)
1. "Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rating of writing prose"; (p4)
2. "Sheer egoism – desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. etc." (p4)
3 e 4. "Aesthetic enthusiasm – perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed." (p5)
5. "Historical impulse – desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity." (p5)
6. "Political purpose – (…) desire to push the world in a certain direction to alter other’s peoples idea of the kind of society that they should strive after." (p5)
7. "I write it [a book] because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing." (p8)
(“Why I Write”, George Orwell, 1946)