Frank McCourt Quotes

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

Kids who want to become writers might want to start carrying a small notebook in their backpack. I encourage people to sit down in malls and listen, just listen, to how people talk.

I've always kept a notebook in my pocket, I've always written stuff down since I was a kid.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

I don't keep a journal.

It seems to me in the past it's been a good thing, as a writer, to have experiences I hadn't expected.

I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don't just use it for writing my fiction.

A diary means yes indeed.

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.

I'm always inspired to write, and it's usually my own life experiences that inspire me.

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.

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.

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 carry around a black leather Moleskine journal all the time. And I always write ideas down, especially when I'm on set and working with actors like Jeremy Irons and Viola Davis and learning from them.

I've been keeping a journal since I was in the seventh grade.

I didn't have to keep a bloody journal. It's terribly boring keeping a journal anyway. I hate it. You spend more time writing down life instead of living it.

I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.

I've been keeping tour journals since I was 17 years old.

I always feel that my films ought to teach me something about life.

I remember travelling up and down the road, and I kept journals during my whole career, and I was always making notes about things I wanted to say, words I wanted to create, actions I wanted to do, things I wanted to do to make the character more imaginative and fantastical.

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 keep a journal, like many writers do. It helps in writing a story, as you can use an incident from the journal and put in your story.

I believe there is a lesson in everything that you do.

Everything about who I am, negative and positive, is what shaped me.

I know what sport has given to me in my life, what opportunities I've had and the lessons I've learned about myself and about life.