Journals QUOTES

1 " Anyway, back to the crush. Sorry to shift gears so fast, but we both know why we're here. I mean, if I wanted to discuss the existential angst of motherhood I'd be writing in a journal. Diaries are for the down and dirty, the stuff you don't want people to ever find out about you. Journals are the things you leave open around the house, hoping a literary agent will wander in, read it and declare you the next genius of your age. "

― Lani Diane Rich

2 " Above all, don’t lie to yourself." – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov" I don’t want to die without any scars." – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club" Not all those who wander are lost." – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring" It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." – André Gide, Autumn Leaves" If you’re making mistakes it means you’re out there doing something." – Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art" Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." – Paulo Coelho, Brida" If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives." – Lemony Snicket, The Ersatz Elevator" The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath" I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do." – Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart" If you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all." – John Green, Paper Towns" Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer." – Dan Brown, Digital Fortress" Fear is an illusion..." - Dark Templar, Starcraft 2 "

3 " Cold feet under a warm blanket, steam over an empty mug--rain splatters on dry window pane--open journals of closed memories... tears of laughter and joy of pain... schmaltz of diametric morning. "

―

4 " If you don't synthesize knowledge, scientific journals become spare-parts catalogues for machines that are never built. "

5 " Every time you think about settling on a more mundane question to answer, or reducing your sample size, or skipping an experiment that would strengthen your interpretation, remember that reviewers and editors of the major journals are looking for the small minority of papers that stand out from the rest. "

6 " Mary's reading list betrayed her passion for forensics and detective novels. There were so many scientific journals and books randomly strewn around her little one-room apartment that it looked like the Great White Hurracane had struck inside.It's all part of my decorating scheme Mary would quip. This may look like the work of a slob, but if you look closer, you'll realize it's my way of giving color to an awfully drab floor. "

7 " Who or what inspires you?" " I must admit that I often read my own articles in scientific journals and inspire myself. "

8 " She felt utterly crushed and betrayed. Science had betrayed her. She had always believed deep down that science would not judge her, even if people did. Her father's books had opened to her touch easily enough. His journals had not flinched from her all too female gaze. But it seemed that science had weighed her, labelled her and found her wanting. Science had decreed that she could not be clever… and that if by some miracle she was clever, it meant that there was something terribly wrong with her. "

― Frances Hardinge , The Lie Tree

9 " The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history. "

― Eric Jay Dolin , Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

10 " It is fascinating to discover that individuals who are asked to assign a punishment to a criminal are influenced by factors that they are unaware of (like the presence of a flag in the room) or that they would consciously diavow (like the color of the criminal's skin). It is boring to find that individuals' proposed punishments are influenced by rational considerations such as the severity of the crime and the criminal's previous record. Interesting: we are more willing to help someonw if there is the smell of fresh bread in the air. Boring: we are more willing to help someone if he or she has been kind to us in the past. We sometimes forget that this bias in publication exists and take what is reported in scientific journals and the popular press as an accurate reflection of our best science of how the mind works. But this is like watching the nightly news and concluding that rape, robbery, and murder are part of any individual's everyday life - forgetting that the nightly news doesn't report the vast majority of cases where nothing of this sort happens at all. "

11 " My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive. "

― Terry Tempest Williams , When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

12 " Having your evening coffee over
A field guide of trails or alpine blossoms

& so I need now to ask you
Which of the old journals did you first

Open to a map of my long wandering
When did you first know I'd come back

& how did you find yourself here
& how did you know this single lantern

You are reading by was the last possible
Light to lead me home? "

― David St. John , The Auroras: New Poems

13 " My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next. "

― Grace Paley , Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories

14 " I am a buyer of blank books. Kids find it interesting that I would buy a blank book. They say, " Twenty-Six dollars for a blank book! Why would you pay that?" The reason I pay twenty-six dollars is to challenge myself to find something worth twenty-six dollars to put in there. All my journals are private, but if you ever got hold of one of them, you wouldn't have to look very far to discover it is worth more than twenty-six dollars "

15 " Tingling fingers, morning birds, rain splatters on window pane, journals of fading escapades and laughter... "

―

16 " Tell me what you’re looking for and i will become that for you. I can sacrifice my inner freedoms for you without looking twice at my old journals and solid promises I made to myself about such things. But you must be prepared to kill me when the smiles are no longer frequent. Do it while I sleep. While I hold your hand. Do it fast, baby. Do it fast. "

― Darnell Lamont Walker

17 " Because drugs have become so profitable, major medical journals rarely publish studies on nondrug treatments of mental health problems.31 Practitioners who explore treatments are typically marginalized as “alternative.” Studies of nondrug treatments are rarely funded unless they involve so-called manualized protocols, where patients and therapists go through narrowly prescribed sequences that allow little fine-tuning to individual patients’ needs. Mainstream medicine is firmly committed to a better life through chemistry, and the fact that we can actually change our own physiology and inner equilibrium by means other than drugs is rarely considered. "

― Bessel van der Kolk , The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

18 " Successful journals break the deadlock of introspective obsession "

― , Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal

19 " Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning. "

― Félix J. Palma , The Map of Time

20 " Sylvia’s inherent appreciation for beauty as both artist and consumer is evident in her journals and letters…….she wrote beautifully about clothes. She wrote about them with irony and wit mixed in with all the rococo prettiness. "

― Elizabeth Winder , Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953

1
2