Some Journaling Quotes

Mr. S’s recent post about rea­sons for blog­ging got me think­ing. I looked around for rea­sons that other peo­ple have jour­naled, and came up with these quotes. It is reas­sur­ing to hear that even accom­plished writ­ers have dark moods and jour­nals filled with the triv­ial.

STENDHAL:

If some indis­creet per­son reads this diary, I wish to deprive him of the plea­sure of mak­ing fun of me by point­ing out to him that this aims at being a math­e­mat­i­cal and rigid report on my man­ner of being, nei­ther too favor­able nor too unfa­vor­able, but stat­ing purely and severely what I believe to have taken place. It is des­tined to cure me of my absur­di­ties when I reread it.

SOPHIA TOLSTOY

It makes me laugh to read my diary. What a lot of contradictions…I always write in my diary when we quarrel.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

I won­der if I shall burn this sheet of paper like most oth­ers I have begun in the same way. To write a diary, I have thought of very often at far and near dis­tances of time: but how could I write a diary with­out throw­ing upon paper my thoughts, all my thoughts — the thoughts of my heart as well as of my head? — & then how could I bear to look on them after they were writ­ten? Adam made fig leaves nec­es­sary for the mind, as well as for the body. And such a mind as I have! — So very exact­ing & exclu­sive & eager & head long & strong & so very very often wrong! Well! but I will write: I must write — & the oftener wrong I know myself to be, the less wrong I shall be in one thing — the less vain I shall be!

PAUL BOWLES

I sup­pose the point of pub­lish­ing such a doc­u­ment is to demon­strate the way in which the hours of a day can as sat­is­fac­to­rily be filled with trivia as with impor­tant events.

ANNE FRANK

Some­times I very much doubt whether in the future any­one will be inter­ested in all my tosh. “The unbo­som­ings of an ugly duck­ling” will be the title of all this nonsense.

NED ROREM

A diary has impact only through the accu­mu­la­tion of unlim­ited obser­va­tions (of which many are obses­sive and recur­ring), never through the devel­op­ment of themes (for then it would no longer be a diary). Works of art must ave a plan; begin­nings and ends. A diary nec­es­sar­ily has no form beyond the acci­den­tal one of impro­vi­sa­tion; hence, though it can­not be a work of art (impro­vi­sa­tion pre­cludes this), per­haps it can be a masterpiece.

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

The utter gra­tu­itous­ness of the diary, as of thought in gen­eral. I shall write tomor­row of Paris. But why? For no rea­son, because it amuses me. And noth­ing here has any rea­son; it’s all a game. Above all, I never force my thought. If I were writ­ing a com­posed book I should press on, like sol­diers in war who are always made to hold out a lit­tle longer than they’re able. Whereas I break off as soon as I’m ready to force myself.

EDNA O’BRIEN

Vir­ginia called them “holdalls” to reflect the light of our lives. The dark, I fear, creeps in rather more, in my case.

FRANZ KAFKA

I won’t give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

This is not a pen, it is a prayer, one must have com­pas­sion for that.

ANNE FRANK

There is a say­ing that “paper is more patient than man”.…Yes, there is no doubt that paper is patient and as I don’t intend to show this cardboard-covered note­book bear­ing the proud name of “diary,” to any­one, unless I find a real friend, boy or girl, prob­a­bly nobody cares. And now I come to the root of the mat­ter, the rea­son for my start­ing a diary; it is that I have no such real friend.

JAMES BOSWELL

[Samuel John­son] advised me to keep a jour­nal of my life, fair and undisguised.…I told him that I had done so ever since I left Scotland.…I put down all sorts of lit­tle inci­dents in it. “Sir,” said he, “there is noth­ing too lit­tle for so lit­tle a crea­ture as man. It is by study­ing lit­tle things that we attain great knowl­edge of hav­ing as lit­tle mis­ery and as much hap­pi­ness as possible”

SUSAN GRIFFIN

Writ­ing about one’s own life, it is only when one writes about the most inti­mate and seem­ingly idio­syn­cratic details that one touches others.

GEORGE SAND

…writ­ing a jour­nal implies that one has ceased to think of the future and has decided to live in the present. It is an announce­ment to fate that you expect noth­ing more. It is asser­tion that you take each day as it comes and make no con­nec­tion between to-day and other days. Writig a jour­nal means that fac­ing your ocean you are afraid to swim across it, so you attempt to drink it drop by drop. It means that you count the last eaves of a tree whose trunk has lost its sap.

When you are in the mood to write a jour­nal the pas­sions have cooled, or else they have so far frozen that they may be exam­ined as safely as ice bound moun­tains are explored in the sea­son when no avalanches fall. No one should allow him­self to solid­ify to this extent unless he is in such a state of upheaval that all the fires of his being are in dan­ger of erup­tion. Then indeed it may be nec­es­sary to harden the outer crust in order to check the explo­sion and save the inner flame from becom­ing extinct.

JOYCE CAROL OATES

The prob­lem lies in the very nature of the jour­nal. If I tell the truth the truth is likely to be petty. If not demor­al­iz­ing, com­i­cal in all the wrong places, crush­ing in its dull­ness. If I don’t tell the truth I lose all inter­est in writing.