Writers Diary Quotes & Sayings

Every person, every race, every nation, has its own particular keynote which it brings to the general chord of life and of humanity. — Annie Besant

in describing the various writers of his idolatry he more than once lets fall a phrase that could equally apply to himself. 'To read Spenser,' he says, 'is to grow in mental health.' What he values in Addison is his 'open-mindedness.' The moments of despair chronicled in Scott's diary cannot, he claims, counterpoise 'that ease and good temper, that fine masculine cheerfulness' suffused through the best of the Waverly novels. Most of all it was the chiaroscuro of what Chaucer called 'earnest' and 'game' that attracted him. He found it eminently in the poetry of Dunbar, that late-medieval Scottish maker who wrote the greatest religious poetry and the earthiest satire in the language — Jocelyn Gibb

When I loved myself enough, I would sometimes wake in the night to music playing within me. — Kim McMillen

There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary. Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana's world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn't the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander's name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it. Alexander. — Paullina Simons

Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don't make any effort to catch them. — Terry Pratchett

That a lie can exist reveals a very precarious slope on which human life trundles. What is a lie in its essence?
Is it the possibility of creating another form of truth, which is to say another possibility of an event which if true could have been as fair; or so to speak in a very pessimistic tone, an act of subversion or perversion or inversion or reversion of a kind. Or is it that a lie alters the very nature of human psychological tendencies - which somehow desire a harmony, albeit sometimes in a violent manner.
That a lie exists reveals that there are possibilities beyond what exists; that existence sometimes is a mere human creation; that ideal is not what is desirable, it is something of a promise which veils itself in categories new each time the real is undesirable; that non-existence is a farce until we are not in a position to unexist. — Ashfaq Saraf

I find it significant that, even though contemporary philosophy tends towards forms of determinism, in the wider culture people are deeply into naming, shaming and blaming each other. So we haven't lost that sense of conscience. — John Cornwell

The last chapter in 'Alice in Worcestershire' is called 'Writing the book'.
I started to write that 'Diary' chapter at the very beginning of the process and followed it through to the end... speaking to the reader.

My decision to do this was because I've often read autobiographies and wondered how the author felt and how it impacted them writing about painful memories that had been locked away in a deep forgotten place.
I wanted to know what was going in their 'present' life while they were writing; about the struggle with sharing their inner secrets and... I'm... inquisitive. (nosy)!

It took me over five years to finish 'Alice in Worcestershire' because sometimes, I was simply too drained to continue. Periodically, I updated the 'Diary' chapter and, thankfully, it's enthusiastically appreciated by readers. — Eskay Teel

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going. — Virginia Woolf

I loved the freedom writers diary and even though i only read it because my teacher made us i loved the book. it shows me some feelings that i also feel sometimes, and even though i never finished reading it because i got lazy its the only book ive ever liked — Erin Gruwell

You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you. — Anais Nin

Who lives in a pineapple under your jeans?" He sang softly. "SpongeBob booty pants!" He ended his little song with a soft slap to my rear. — L.D. Davis

I have written this book quicker than any other," she notes in her diary, "[and] it is all a joke; & yet gay & quick reading I think; a writers holiday. I feel more and more sure that I will never write a novel again — Virginia Woolf

An introspective man who doesn't keep a diary consigns himself to a special hell — Tim Lucas