Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

The aphorism frames writing not as a hobby or route to prestige, but as a vocation compelled by inner necessity. “Cannot live without writing” sets an ethical and existential threshold: one should write only when silence would feel like a betrayal of one’s deepest obligations or experiences. The second sentence—“what you alone can write”—adds a demand for singularity and responsibility: the writer’s task is to bear witness to what is uniquely theirs (voice, memory, perspective), rather than to imitate trends or manufacture effects. Read together, the lines urge authenticity, restraint, and moral seriousness about the act of putting words into the world.