Up: [[Introspective Writing]] > [!Orbit] Sue Townsend > I have decided to keep a full journal in the hope that my life will perhaps seem more interesting when it is written down. > [!Orbit] Oscar Wilde > I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. > [!Orbit] Virginia Woolf > What sort of diary should I like mine to be? ...I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. > [!Orbit] Virginia Woolf > I get out this diary and read, as one always reads one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity. > [!Orbit] Leo Tolstoy, written June 14, 1850 > There are lots of thoughts in one's head, and some of them seem very remarkable, but when you examine them they turn out to be nonsense; others on the other hand seem sensible -- and that's what a diary is needed for. On the basis of one's diary it is very convenient to judge oneself. > [!Orbit] James Lees-Milne, written June 23, 1973 > I have decided that the real reason why one keeps a diary is the compulsion to write something, anything. Secondly, all intending writers are well advised to keep diaries, for practice, like doing scales. Mine are absolutely unstudied. I never pause an instant to consider whether I write grammatically, or not. No doubt diary-keeping is also a kind of vanity. One has the sauce to believe that every thought which comes into one's head merits recording. > [!Orbit] H.D. Thoreau, written October 21, 1857 >Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day. > [!Orbit] David Sedaris in *Theft by Finding, Diaries 1977-2002* > In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it’s so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it. (p. 9) > [!Orbit] May Sarton, written November 20, 1974 > I find it wonderful to have a receptacle into which to pour vivid momentary insights, and a way of ordering day-to-day experience, (as opposed to Maslow’s ‘peak experiences,’ which would require poetry). If there is an art to the keeping of a journal intended for publication yet at the same time a very personal record, it may be in what Elizabeth Bowen said: ‘One must regard oneself impersonally as an instrument.’ > [!Orbit] Jamie Lees-Milne, written December 1, 1977 > I am sure that the only good diaries are those written by a writer who is constantly coming upon important people in the great world; and by a writer who stays at home, goes nowhere, sees few people and sticks to the common round. Such a writer has time to ruminate and observe his surroundings. He alone can paint a picture of his complete life, little though it may be. > > [!Orbit] [[Anne Truitt]] in *Daybook: Journal of an artist* > I tried to be patient with the rhythmical unfolding of my writing, never to second-think it, and as the year unfolded found myself rewarded when a subtle logic began to emerge. (p. xiii) > [!Orbit] Susan Sontag > In my journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.