Michael Dirda Quotes

I have a penchant for fresh notebooks and mechanical pencils. It seems every time I go to the store, I buy a new notebook. I have dozens of them just sitting around.

Near my desk, I keep a large plastic carton filled with fresh notebooks and stationery of various kinds, sizes, and qualities.

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

I've been writing in notebooks for 40 years or so.

I work by hand, with a fountain pen, in bound notebooks I buy in India.

People buy pads all the time, because they want to write stuff down. We're never going to get away from paper, ever. People like writing; that's why more people are writing more real thank-you notes now - not just to stand out, but because there's something about pen to paper, about holding something cool in your hands.

There is something so hopeful about a diary, a journal, a new notebook, which Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf both wrote about. A blog. Perhaps we all are waiting for someone to discover us.

Stationery gets me excited because it has an individual character, unlike computers, which may be convenient but are generic and bland.

I always have Moleskine notebooks on my desk. I am a big journaler. Every day I write down where I went, who I spoke to and what it was all about. Richard Branson told me to do that.

Notebooks allow for all kinds of record-keeping, and I kept one myself as a kid. I was attracted to mixing up words and pictures freely, since that's how I think.

I'm a total stationery fiend - I have drawers and drawers of lovely printed cards and wrapping paper.

I take almost no notes when I write. I have one notebook - this old green leather notebook that my dad gave me a decade ago.

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

In my household, a Trapper-Keeper was too expensive - we had plain old three-ring notebooks - and I always wanted a Trapper-Keeper.

When I'm in the field, when I'm working, I keep very careful notes. I wear big shirts with big breast pockets, and I carry in them two little spiral notebooks.

I write with a Uni-Ball Onyx Micropoint on nine-by-seven bound notebooks made by a Canadian company called Blueline. After I do a few drafts, I type up the poem on a Macintosh G3 and then send it out the door.

One of my favorite stores in the Old Town is Buchbinderei. It's this tiny stationery shop where the owner, Doris Feldman, makes these beautiful hand-bound notebooks I always buy for gifts.

I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.

I always have a good pen with me.

There's an ongoing 'water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink' situation at my house in terms of both pens and paper.

I only write in blue ink.

I love pens, especially when writing on good-quality paper. But I don't have a favorite - I try all kinds in all colors. Like most folks, I misplace them a lot, so I don't use anything too fancy.

I'm not one for souvenirs though I do have a treasured yellow pot I bought at Maison d'Empereur in Marseille.

I kept notebooks as a kid, and they were important to me.

Now I have notebooks that are filled up, mostly with Doom Patrol, but also angry letters to myself mixed in with the comic.