Diaries Quotes

“If you read someone else's diary, you get what you deserve.”
― David Sedaris

“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“And Meredith and Bonnie, who's going to bend some spoons for us next. I'm going to throw you down a rope… that is, unless Bonnie can levitate you out.”
― L.J. Smith, The Struggle

“There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“I am fond of lovers but I cannot love, I am too far away, am banished,”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly--not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things the outer limits would suffice.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“When I moved, I unearthed the diaries I kept for ten years. I sat and went through them and they were a worthless burden to own. People will say it's tragic I threw them out, but I know it isn't.”
― Bill Callahan, Letters to Emma Bowlcut

“Now I'll never see him again, and maybe it's a good thing. He walked out of my life last night for once and for all. I know with sickening certainty that it's the end. There were just those two dates we had, and the time he came over with the boys, and tonight. Yet I liked him too much - - - way too much, and I ripped him out of my heart so it wouldn't get to hurt me more than it did. Oh, he's magnetic, he's charming; you could fall into his eyes. Let's face it: his sex appeal was unbearably strong. I wanted to know him - - - the thoughts, the ideas behind the handsome, confident, wise-cracking mask. "I've changed," he told me. "You would have liked me three years ago. Now I'm a wiseguy." We sat together for a few hours on the porch, talking, and staring at nothing. Then the friction increased, centered. His nearness was electric in itself. "Can't you see," he said. "I want to kiss you." So he kissed me, hungrily, his eyes shut, his hand warm, curved burning into my stomach. "I wish I hated you," I said. "Why did you come?" "Why? I wanted your company. Alby and Pete were going to the ball game, and I couldn't see that. Warrie and Jerry were going drinking; couldn't see that either." It was past eleven; I walked to the door with him and stepped outside into the cool August night. "Come here," he said. "I'll whisper something: I like you, but not too much. I don't want to like anybody too much." Then it hit me and I just blurted, "I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them." He was definite, "Nobody knows me." So that was it; the end. "Goodbye for good, then," I said. He looked hard at me, a smile twisting his mouth, "You lucky kid; you don't know how lucky you are." I was crying quietly, my face contorted. "Stop it!" The words came like knife thrusts, and then gentleness, "In case I don't see you, have a nice time at Smith." "Have a hell of a nice life," I said. And he walked off down the path with his jaunty, independent stride. And I stood there where he left me, tremulous with love and longing, weeping in the dark. That night it was hard to get to sleep.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“By beginning a diary, I was already conceding that life would be more bearable if I looked at it as an adventure and a tale. I was telling myself the story of a life, and this transmutes into an adventure the things which can shatter you.”
― Anaïs Nin

“An introspective man who doesn’t keep a diary consigns himself to a special hell”
― Tim Lucas, The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula

“علمت أنه حين تشق الروح الهادية العظيمة الإنسانية إلى شطرين متصارعين، سأكون الى جانب الشعب”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries.
Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, but more an I've-gotta-be-me-but-nobody-cares sentimentalism that passed for meaning, and they usually stopped keeping a diary by the time they hit thirty, because by then they didn't want to ponder the meaning of life anymore because it scared the crap out of them.”
― Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year

“The women cannot go out except to go to church or to the bullfight, and even that is unusual. I consider it a very ugly custom, and if I couldn't go out as I wished, I would leave this country [Spain], if only because of that one custom of the inhabitants.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Early Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1

“Civil War armies were the most literate in history to that time. More than 90 percent of white Union soldiers and more than 80 percent of Confederate soldiers were literate, and most of them wrote frequent letters to families and friends... I am convinced that [their letters and diaries] bring us closer to the real thoughts and emotions of those men than any other kind of surviving evidence.”
― James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War

“I have always loved the feel of books, the way they give a literal weight to words and make of them a sacred object I can hold. I'd made my own books as soon as I'd learned to write, tying sheets of construction paper together with ribbon to make a spine, then inscribing my name on the frontispiece in the most ceremonial script I could manage.”
― Nathasha Trethewey

“Twenty seven years ago, during my first romantic relationship with a boy, I started keeping a diary about my thoughts and experiences. That diary formed the basis of my novel “A Dream of Two Moons,” the title of which comes from some paranormal occurrences from real life.”
― Sahara Sanders, INDIGO DIARIES: A Series of Novels

“Vivian, it's fine. Do you keep a diary?'
'I used to,' I say, 'but it took too long to write everything I thought or saw or did. I couldn't go anywhere without my diary, and my sister got annoyed when I wrote down everything she said. But if I didn't do that, it wasn't a true diary.'
'It's all or nothing with you, isn't it, Vivian?'
I sense she's going to laugh again, so I speak hastily.
'There are boxes of my old diaries in the attic, but they're so tiring to read. It's like reliving a whole part of my old life while living in my current life. And I've forgotten most of what's written, so what's the point of living these details in the first place if I'm not going to remember them?”
― Caitriona Lally, Eggshells

“We have found each other in that nostalgia of being abandoned.”
― maiaruna, Buku Harian Karenina

“For the next 16 hours, fueled by coffee and amphetamines, I wrestled with John Lennon's scrawls and codes and symbols. As I transcribed his words, I said them out loud like an incantation, and I began to feel Lennon's energy flowing through me.”
― Robert Rosen, Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon

“Dio, la vita non è proprio altro che solitudine, malgrado tutti gli oppiacei, malgrado la stridula, posticcia allegria delle "feste" senza scopo, malgrado il sorriso falso che tutti indossiamo. E quando infine trovi qualcuno in cui senti di poter riversare la tua anima, ti blocchi di colpo davanti alle tue stesse parole-le hai tenute dentro così a lungo, contratte nel buio, che sono ormai sbiadite, brutte, banali, fiacche.”
― Sylvia Plath

“Gradually I fell back into the old habit of being surrounded by books, papers, journals, and diaries.”
― Avijeet Das

“Oh, he's a sweet thing and I love him so--and I love life--and everything's beautiful!”
― Cornelia Spelman

“As far as he knows, nothing has changed between us. I was indifferent before, and if I’m going to brave the storm, I’ve got to muster those feelings back up again. At least until we get out of here tonight and I can find refuge in the pages of my diary.”
― Allyson Kennedy, The Crush

“Put pen to paper.
The people who build their truest, most beautiful lives usually do. It's hard to jump from dreaming to doing. As every architect or designer knows, here is a critical step between vision and reality. Before imagination becomes three-dimensional, it usually needs to become two-dimensional.
[...]
Let's look at what we've written and decide that these are not pipe dreams; these are our marching orders. These are the blueprints for our lives.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life

“I rub my hand over my mother’s words. My throat clenches, and I hiccup, forcing back a sob. A tear lands on the lined page of the diary with a splat. The word “willow” starts to bleed with the moisture. I read through the entry once more.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“Thinking of that summer makes me remember the one before. I don’t recall what I had for lunch or what I watched on TV this afternoon, but I remember the day I tried to free myself from my sorrows under the weeping willow and the following summer among the flowers. Why is this so fresh and real of late? I don’t know. Maybe something I learned during that time will help prepare me for this journey into forgetfulness—the path I’m forced to walk on. Time is stealing my memories.”
― Jenny Knipfer, Under the Weeping Willow

“Let the pen carry your thoughts.”
― Denisha Powell

“I IX (1914)—In complete helplessness wrote barely 2 pages. I have retreated considerably today, even though I had slept well. But I know that I must not yield, if I want to rise above the lowest woes of my writing, which is already held down by the rest of my way of life, into the greater freedom that might be waiting for me. The old dullness has not yet completely left me I realize and the coldness of my heart might never leave me. The fact that I recoil from no humiliation can just as well mean hopelessness as give hope.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“I kept diaries sporadically throughout my childhood, writing regularly for a few weeks or months before losing interest.”
― Alice Robb, Don't Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet

“Even for autobiographical purposes a diary is nothing like so useful as I had hoped. You put down each day what you think important; but of course you cannot each day see what will prove to have been important in the long run.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life