Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair.

A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.

My best writing has always been in journals.

I wrote as a teenager, and once I started acting, you know, you're learning lines, you're doing other people's words, it takes up a lot of time. Especially if you're dedicated to what you're doing, you're trying to do a decent job at it. But I would have said to myself, "Write more, please."

But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

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.

If I'm writing strictly for others, how does that show what I'm experiencing or thinking? I just got to a point where I realized I could be as personal as I wanted to be and people could relate to those situations if they so choose.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

I have a lot of written material, and all of it's different. Some records that I have are country, some pop, some alternative rock. I just write what I feel, so I can't specifically say. I just want to be an artist of truth and an artist that stays true to herself.

Most writers write from their own experiences. That is where the honesty and intensity of emotions come from.

I wasn't quite used to writing a diary - I didn't understand why people did it - but I wrote down notes and they went into a poem.

I kept a diary as a teenager but I never would have shared it with anyone. Still, I think it's very good practice to write things down.

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell.

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts--I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious--insolent & whimsical I must appear!--one moment flighty and half mad,--the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.

You know what, I just write what I feel.

My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.

Write what you would love to read. Finish what you begin to write. Your voice is uniquely yours and we are all waiting to hear it.

The best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don't live with a lover or roommate who doesn't respect your work. Don't lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don't write.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Now I write often. I decided that I need to write for myself - I can't really direct other people's material.

I must try to set aside half an hour in some part of my day, and consecrate it to diary writing. Give it a name and a place, and then perhaps, such is the human mind, I shall come to think it a duty, and disregard other duties for it.

Writing, as I experience it, means wringing out the heart/mind until it stops lying.

I was already in a groove and decided to initially write down everything, as I would in an actual diary, and then go back and take out what I was too shy to reveal. But I wound up leaving more in than I imagined, and that was because I wanted to be transparent and real.

You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world.