Barack Obama Quotes

I don't know what I think until I write it down.

Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.

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

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

Think before you act and act on what you believe.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

The more I talk about things, the more I understand myself.

I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking.

I start asking a lot of questions about my own life, and it's not necessarily fun, but it's a good exercise.

You learn a lot about yourself just by writing it down.

My only way of processing anything for me is by writing.

See, even if you're stuck in life, if you can describe just exactly the way you're stuck, then you will immediately recognise that you can't go on that way anymore. So, just saying precisely, writing precisely how you're stuck, or how you're alienated, opens up a door of freedom for you.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

As Socrates I believe said the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe that's true. I do believe that.

We must discover how to ask simple questions of ourselves.

I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.

If you haven't doubted, you probably haven't thought very hard about what you believe.

In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.

If you want to know what you look like, look into a mirror. If you want to know how you think, you should write

The thing I believe in most in the world is my own fallibility, so I am willing to believe that I may be wrong too.

Seeing that I am so busily occupied with myself just now, I want to try to paint my self-portrait in writing.