Art & Creativity Quote by Dorothy Fields

The line lands like a backstage pep talk from someone who knew exactly how the machinery of entertainment can sand your edges down. Dorothy Fields wrote in an era when a “successful” song wasn’t just art; it was an industrial product, shaped by Broadway schedules, studio notes, censorship, and the expectations pinned to a woman in a male-dominated business. Against that pressure, “Write what you feel” isn’t dreamy advice. It’s a survival strategy.

Fields’s phrasing is bluntly physical: feel first, then write. Not “think,” not “plan,” not “optimize.” She’s pointing to the one resource that can’t be outsourced or mimicked by formula. The second sentence tightens the screw: “Write because of that need for expression.” That word “need” matters. It reframes creativity as compulsion rather than lifestyle branding, the opposite of writing to perform taste, chase trends, or demonstrate cleverness. She’s arguing for an internal mandate that justifies the risk of sincerity.

The subtext is also professional: emotion is not the enemy of craft; it’s the engine of it. Fields specialized in lyrics that read as conversational but hit with surgical timing. Her best work makes feeling look effortless precisely because it’s disciplined. So the intent here isn’t to romanticize rawness. It’s to insist that technique should serve urgency, not replace it. In a culture that rewards polish and punishes vulnerability, Fields is reminding writers why audiences still lean in: they can hear when something had to be said.