Alain de Botton Quotes

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

I've always kept a journal and brought storytelling into my teaching.

Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.

Get a notebook, my young folks, a journal that will last through all time, and maybe the angels may quote from it for eternity. Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies.

Part of my therapy is to write.

I don't keep a journal anymore. I did when I was younger, and I think its good for young girls to try and express what they are feeling on paper; it's cathartic.

Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

I've had journals ever since I was really little. Sometimes I write poems and stuff, but for the most part I write down what happens to me during the day that I don't want to forget. So I have books filled with little things like that.

I don't keep a journal.

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.

When you die, others who think they know you, will concoct things about you... Better pick up a pen and write it yourself, for you know yourself best.

Life may unfold chronologically for the body and for bureaucracies that keep track of such things as births, marriages, deaths, visas, tax returns, expulsions, and identity cards, but memory does not play this game in quite the same way, always manages to confound the desire for tidiness.

I want to explore more sides of humanity and myself. That's what acting is about.

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.

I used to love writing in my journal.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

I've kept a diary since I was 11.

I always kept a diary - not a diary like, 'Dear Diary, we got up at 5 A.M., and I wore the weird hair again and that white dress! Hi-yeee!' I'd just write.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.

Since human memory is short and does not suffice for a crowd of things, the authority of those who preceded our age, the divine emperors and kings, has decreed that those things were to be written down which the progress of fleeting time generally removes from the knowledge of men.

My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.