William Plomer Quotes

Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.

The writing process is more... it becomes a case of more like a diary for me. I mean, I write stuff down all day whenever I'm experiencing something that I think would be important for me to look at later on. You know, whether it be for writing lyrics or just for a memory, like, 'Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I was feeling that way at that time'.

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.

Today I start a diary; it is against my usual habbits, but out of a clearly felt need.

I don't keep a journal.

I remember keeping a lot of journals and diaries and trying to form a complete thought just based off of those immediate, raw feelings. If anything, I was conscious about how I just always wanted to be as honest as possible, no matter how vulnerable it would make me seem.

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.

I write about personal experiences.

I tend to write from a personal place, and most of the time when I'm writing by myself, it's coming from something I've experienced.

I don't think I could write about something I've never experienced or felt; all my songs are about things I've been through.

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

Taking the time to write in our lives gives us the time of our lives. As we describe our environments, we begin to savor them. Even the most rushed and pell-mell life begins to take on the patina of being cherished.

Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself.

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.

A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one's movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land.

A journal should be neither an echo nor a pander.

Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self.

My diary seems to keep me whole.

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.

To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintance and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal: a journal in which I must confess my every thought, must open my whole heart!

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

I have all these revelations as I'm writing. Each song is like a chapter of my diary.

It's while writing that suddenly a point of view appears: 'So, that's what I really thought about this thing'. Then it feels part of me.