Natasha Trethewey Quotes

I throw ideas out into the open when I really should just be writing them down in a journal.

I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.

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

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

When I'm between projects, I keep a journal I call a 'thought log,' and it's my practice to write down whatever interests me.

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

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

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.

Usually, I walk around and think about things. When I come across a thought that makes me laugh, I write it down.

I've had so many little ideas I've written down here and there. Some ideas I've got reams of notes for.

Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.

I have to sit alone in a room and be alone with my own thoughts. It always starts with an idea, and once the idea grows, I have a concept of what I want to say, and once I go out there and start feeling the energy, that concept grows and becomes whatever it is.

I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.

Writing, for me, is an extension of thinking - it's my way of processing, and only when I've gotten something down on the page have I thought through it fully.

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.

I wake up sometimes with an idea and then I write it down. It's not necessarily easy, but when you focus on something it comes.

I'm a long distance runner, and I get my best ideas when I'm out running. It also helps that I can't write it down immediately - if you hold onto an idea, other things will stick on it.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

I'm always writing at night - things I would change, things I would do differently. When I write a note, it sticks in my head differently.

There is something so hopeful about a diary, a journal, a new notebook, which Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf both wrote about. A blog. Perhaps we all are waiting for someone to discover us.

The idea is in my head to put it down is nothing.

I've never tried to define my states of mind when I write.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.