Anxious Quote by Joan Didion

“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant re-arrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some…

— Joan Didion

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily,…

— Joan Didion

Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader

— Lionel Trilling

“A person's books are private, not to be poked around by others at will.”

— Kate Furnivall

A notebook can be a clearing in the forest of your life, a place where you can be alone and content as you play…

— Ralph Fletcher

I kept notebooks as a kid, and they were important to me.

— Emil Ferris

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of…

— Joan Didion

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

— Sydney Pollack

The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind.

— John Gregory Dunne

About my books, that's all that I think the public has, in its normal way, to know. My private life is, by definition, private.

— Patrick O'Brian

Let me write that down in my 'Things I don't give a fuck about' notebook.

— Anonymous

I have kept diaries, of course, but they can't be read for quite a long time. I'm always curious about people who are fascinated…

— Doris Lessing