My desire [SS first wrote "need," then crossed it out] to write is connected with my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon, to match the weapon that society has against me. It doesn’t justify my homosexuality. But it would give me — I feel — a license.
There are at least two interestesting points forming in my mind.
1. It is salient that she crossed out the word "need" and changed it to "desire." Somewhere else in her diaries she wrote, "I lust to write." The way she felt towards writing was that writing exhilarated her. It was not merely an obligation, but some sort of arousal on a deeper psychological level.
2. The act of writing can be a "license" and words have the power to legitimize. This reminds me of a quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley that I've remembered till now from a college professor: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
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