Dani Shapiro Quotes

I have a little pocket journal. I just put the pen on the paper and just go.

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.

When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether to follow some of those first impressions or whether to abandon them.

Whenever something happens that makes me laugh or if I remember something in the middle of the night that I want to share, I jot the experience down.

I sit with the intention to write a record.

I carry a notebook and write down things to do, and I write out thoughts and stuff like that.

I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.

The keyboard is my journal.

The notepad is open and the hand is writing.

It's always helpful to put things down on paper. That's why I started writing.

I often spend the majority of my time thinking and writing down notes.

At any rate, nothing was more characteristic of him [Walter Benjamin] in the thirties than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him and in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of "pearls" and "coral." On occasion he read from them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection.

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

There’s different ways to be impacted by truth. One is to read the scriptures. Another is to read other works by other people who have read the scriptures, non fiction for example. Another is to do studies. Another is to go to a place of worship. Another thing is to sit and listen to someone who’s speaking. There’s all kinds of ways. Another way is to write. About the truth. Discover the struggle through your character.

She needs a new journal. The one she has is problematic. To get to the present, she needs to page through the past, and when she does, she remembers things, and her new journal entries become, for the most part, reactions to the days she regrets, wants to correct, rewrite.

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook . . . and use it to list all the good in your life.

I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they're the most important.

Be a collector of good ideas. Keep a journal. If you hear a good idea, capture it, write it down. Don't trust your memory.

But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas.

But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.