Notebook Quotes

And below, the notebook filled with fine cursive script, laying out in strict order conclusion and delusion, mingling myth and science, drawing from learned men and legends, all of it based on the power of dreams. To any casual observer, it could be either a muddle of half-thought-out nonsense or, at best, the outline for a clever-silly novel. Only to me did it have the look of a careful, deliberate plan. In ~ Diana Gabaldon

He carries around a notebook where he keeps a list of suspects and motives so the police will have leads if he ever turns up murdered ~ Stephanie Tromly

You don't know who Nicholas Sparks is?" Dash asked. I shook my head. "Please don't ever find out," he said. ~ Rachel Cohn

All you had to say was, 'I am a writer,' and you became one. You didn't even have to write anything. You could just sit in a coffee shop with a notebook and stare into space, with a slightly bemused look on your face, judging the weight of the world with a jaundiced eye. As you can see, you can be completely full of shit and still be a writer ... I also thought it was going to be a great way to meet girls, but it wasn't
probably because as I was staring into space, I no doubt looked mildly retarded. You see, I wanted to write plays, which in retrospect is a lot harder than learning Mandarin, I think. How I ended up in this delusional state shall be saved for another time. ~ Lewis Black

didn't talk soothingly to the rat, or stroke her, but firmly grabbed her behind the neck, mimicking a playful nip, and then ran his fingers up and down her rib cage, tickling her. She squirmed briefly, but stopped when he turned her over and tickled her belly. (Like humans, rats have "tickle-skin.") That was when she began to laugh, calls that we heard through the bat detector as quick, high-pitched chirps, and saw on the computer monitor in a sonogram rendition as a vertical series of wavy lines. Compared to a sonogram of various kinds of human laughs, a rat's chirps may be closest to a giggle. "There, she's laughing already," Panksepp said, tickling her some more. "Chup, chup, chup," I wrote in my notebook, trying to approximate the bat-detector's translation of her rat laughter. When Panksepp stopped tickling, she jumped up and bunny-hopped around the bin, while making more of her laughing play-chirps. ~ Virginia Morell

This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest counties . . . I had read at least twenty of the [fairy tales] when I noticed something that had never struck me before--I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been of chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears! It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the very next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write . . . the day was warm and windless and without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story. ~ M.M. Kaye

And so I make my way across the room steadily, carefully. Hands shaking, I pull the string, lifting my blinds. They rise slowly, drawing more moonlight into the room with every inch
And there he is, crouched low on the roof. Same leather jacket. The hair is his, the cheekbones, the perfect nose . . . the eyes: dark and mysterious . . . full of secrets. . . . My heart flutters, body light. I reach out to touch him, thinking he might disappear, my fingers disrupted by the windowpane.
On the other side, Parker lifts his hand and mouths:
"Hi."
I mouth "Hi" back.
He holds up a single finger, signalling me to hold on. He picks up a spiral-bound notebook and flips open the cover, turning the first page to me. I recognize his neat, block print instantly: bold, black Sharpie. I know this is unexpected . . . , I read. He flips the page.
. . . and strange . . .
I lift an eyebrow.
. . . but please hear read me out.
He flips to the next page.
I know I told you I never lied . . .
. . . but that was (obviously) the biggest lie of all. The truth is: I'm a liar.
I lied.
I lied to myself . . .
. . . and to you.
Parker watches as I read. Our eyes meet, and he flips the page.
But only because I had to.
I wasn't supposed to fall in love with you, Jaden . . .
. . . but it happened anyway.
I clear my throat, and swallow hard, but it's squeezed shut again, tight.
And it gets worse.
Not only am I ~ Katie Klein

(Heinrich von) Kleist would not be a Prussian if his first thought would not have been orderlinessand he would not be a German if he had not placed all his hopes of developing this inner orderliness into education. Education is the secret of life for him as for every German: studying, learning a lot from books, sitting in lectures, keeping notebooks, listening intently to professors ... ~ Stefan Zweig

Now, no complaining, Waxillium. It will help. I've put the list in this little book," Steris said, producing a palm-sized notebook, "for ease of reference. Each page contains a conversation opener, indexed to the people it will likely work best upon. The numbers below list ways you could segue the conversation into useful areas and perhaps figure out what our targets are up to, and what their connection is to the Bands of Mourning."
"I'm not socially incompetent, Steris," Wax said. "I can make small talk."
"I know that," Steris said, "but I'd rather avoid an incident like the Cett party. ... "
"Which Cett party?"
"The one where you head-butted someone."
He cocked his head. "Oh, right. That smarmy little man with the ridiculous mustache. ~ Brandon Sanderson

A gaping chasm separates what we try to be aware of and what we actually are aware of. And I don't care how long your yardstick is, there's no measuring that drop. What I can set down here in writing only amounts to a catalog. Not a novel, not literature, not even art. Just a notebook with a line ruled down the center. And maybe a lesson or two in it somewhere. ~ Haruki Murakami

They're headed for some place called the Great Barrier."
"A place that doesn't exist." Liv was shaking her head, checking the rotating dials on her wrist.
Link pushed away his plate, still covered with food. "So let me get this straight. We're gonna go down into the
Tunnels and find this moon outta time with Liv's fancy watch?"
"Selenometer." Liv didn't look up from copying numbers from the dials into her red notebook. ~ Kami Garcia

The notebook was my anchor through all of it. ~ Francis Ford Coppola

If life is envisioned as a continuously running motion picture, the keeping of a notebook stops the action and allows a meaningful scene to be explored frame by frame. ~ Jo Coudert

When you wake up, instead of checking emails on your phone, or counting your retweets, pick up a pen and scratch a few sentences into a notebook. ~ Kevin Barry

When I think about my ideal free day, it usually involves going into London and sitting in a nice coffeehouse with cake and coffee, but I would probably still have my notebook in my pocket. ~ Jonathan Stroud

Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
- Rothchild's Fiddle ~ Anton Chekhov

She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death. ~ Milan Kundera

Easy for you to say. You're the one who got plowed. I was doing the plowing. Cam's mouth opened. Oh my God, did I really just say that? I had. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

For years, he filled a notebook with beautiful lies and impossible hopes. When he found a genie, he simply said, "I wish it was all true. ~ T.R. Darling

My life felt heavy that night, with each year of my life like a weighty crate, so I had almost thirteen crates to carry around inside me, with each crate full of notebooks and each notebook full of secrets. It is hard to lug such a heavy load around with me and to keep everyone from seeing it. But some secrets are so strange and so dangerous that showing them to people makes the strangeness and the danger pour into their lives like dark, dark ink. I lived with this ink myself, emblazoned on my ankle for me to see each morning when I got out of bed, except for the days when I collapsed exhausted with my shoes on. But I did not want to stain anyone else's life. ~ Lemony Snicket

The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: He stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has just come off his ship; he has lost the sense of the human lot; he seems to look on you as if you were a "proposition" to be inserted in a syllogism, or an example to be put down in a notebook. ~ Antonin Sertillanges

19. I wrote in my notebook that even if all the possible scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all. ~ E.L. Doctorow

She didn't care anymore ... and she got no pleasure from the work she did, but she did it. Everything bored her. She found that when she didn't have a notebook it was hard for her to think. The thoughts came slowly, as though they had to squeeze through a tiny door to get to her, whereas when she wrote, they flowed out faster than she could put them down. She sat very stupidly with a blank mind until finall 'I feel different' came slowly to her mind.
Yes, she thought, after a long pause. And then, after more time, 'Mean, I feel mean. ~ Louise Fitzhugh

Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens. ~ Walter Benjamin

He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And them Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five. ~ Terry Pratchett

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all?
It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful if accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.
Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to wake up.
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearranger of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentment of loss. ~ Joan Didion

I skim through our notebook, thick with words, and then through our Facebook messages - so many now - and then I write a new one, quoting Virginia Woolf: Let us wander whirling to the gilt chairs. ... Are we not acceptable, moon? Are we not lovely sitting together here ... ? ~ Jennifer Niven

I don't have a favorite cooking tool. In the kitchen, I always have my pencil and notebook in my hand. I cook more theoretically than I do practically. My job is creative, and in the kitchen, the biggest part of my creativity is theoretical. The pencil has a symbolic meaning for me. The type of person who carries a pencil around is the type of person who's open to change. Someone who walks around with a pen isn't; he's the opposite. ~ Ferran Adria

Would the pair of you like to turn your backs so you exclude us more effectively?" Jode asks.

"We're just adding to the list." I hold up my journal.

"Daryn." Gideon shakes his head, pretending to be disappointed. "It's our list."

"A list?" Jode leans back, resting his head against his bag. "What's this list about?"

Rather than explain it, I just lean over and give it to him.

Gideon puts his hand over his heart and winces. "I hate sharing, Martin."

I lean up, whispering in his ear. "Some things are only for you."

He gives me a long unblinking look that makes my face burn and my body feel light and hot.

"This is an outrage," Jode says dryly. "I'm in here once and Gideon is here … two, three, four times?"

"Three," I say. "The last one doesn't really count."

"Oh, it counts," Gideon says.

"How many times am I in it?" Marcus asks.

"Are you guys making this a competition?"

"Of course."

"Yeah."

"Definitely. And I'm dominating."

"For real," Marcus says. "How many times am I on there?"

"Once, like me. For your winning smile." Jode closes the notebook and tosses it to Marcus. "But don't let it go to your head. Gideon's arse has a spot on the list as well."

Gideon looks at me and winks. "Like I said, dominating."

"Dare, you got a pen?" Marcus asks.

This catches me by surp ~ Veronica Rossi

For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver
that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it. ~ Anna Quindlen

Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook ~ Nizar Qabbani

I wanted a real diary, but there wasn't time to visit a stationery store, so instead I ran down to Thrift Drug and got you. According to your cover, you're an 'Official Popeye the Sailor Spiral-Bound Notebook, copyright © 1959 King Features Syndicate.' When I look into your wizened face, Popeye, I know you're a man I can trust. ~ James K. Morrow

Now you've done it." His tone was quietly playful.
I couldn't help it.I looked up at him questioningly.
"You've added a third word to your repitoire. Hi,thanks,and now yes." His lips turned up at the corners,and the heat rushed to my face. He noticed. "At least that much hasn't changed."
I turned back to my notebook,my hands trembling.
He leaned toward me. "Now that we have our first conversation out of the way, do you want to tell me where you've been?" From the way he spoke I knew his smile was gone.
I could feel little beads of sweat form on my forehead.
"You left me.Without a word," he said. He sounded tentative, as if he were trying to keep his voice even. I took in a deep breath,but I couldn't figure out what he was feeling. There wasn't one singular emotion that was stronger than the others. "Don't you have anything to say to me?"
He waited. My heart felt like it would burst through my chest into a million little pieces,and I could see this wasn't going to work.
I started to close my book.
"Don't-" he blurted, and I froze. "Don't go.You don't have to talk to me.I'm the one who should go." His voice sounded achingly sad. I could hear him packing his bag.
Say something.Say something. "Um..."
Jack paused, as if further movement might stop my words.
He was the reason I came back.I couldn't scare him off. As hard as it would be to talk to him,it would be much harder to watch him walk out that door. "No," I said. I ~ Brodi Ashton

We weren't trying to be kind. We've brought you these things because you absolutely need them. That's all.' -- Ágota Kristóf. The Notebook ~ Agota Kristf

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. ~ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall. ~ W. Eugene Smith

With God's help, I've not had a drink in nine and a half years. That's my whole story right there. And because of that, I'm doing this. I'm making records, I'm touring. I was so involved in just getting brain damaged, I wasn't doing anything. I had great ideas, many notebooks filled with notes, some of them I can read and some of them I just can't read, but I really didn't do anything constructive, it was all just good ideas. Now I'm trying to lead a constructive life a day at a time. ~ Ringo Starr

For those you work with or interact with regularly .. get a notebook and write down positive aspects of each of those people. ~ Rhonda Byrne

After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines - well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads - that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco - the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me. ~ Denis Johnson

Ages ago, when I published 'Amelia's Notebook,' I'd sent it to traditional publishers I'd been working with, but nobody knew what to do with it. Tricycle was this small publisher who didn't know any better, and they took a chance. ~ Marissa Moss

A language you cannot speak yourself is not necessarily a god-awful mess, Celia says, transcribing a line of symbols into her notebook. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Once I have the idea for a story. I start collecting all kinds of helpful information and storing it in three-ring notebooks. For example, I may see a picture of a man in a magazine and say, 'That's exactly what the father in my book looks like!' ... I save everything that will help
maps, articles, hand-jotted notes, bits of dialogue from conversations that I overhear. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

I started writing an album on flights to Africa and Brazil, but it was crazy because I left the notebook on the plane. It had seven or eight songs in it. After that, I'm not writing any more songs on notebooks - and I keep my Blackberry close! ~ Estelle

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. ~ Ann Turner

And the day inevitably comes when the scrapbook of summer, smeared with ice cream slurps and sweat stains, gives way to that new clean white notebook, spine unbroken, begging to be smudged with the enthusiasm of a number two pencil and a mind open to the possibilities. ~ Toni Sorenson

Merrick moved away from the guests and toward the terrace doors, where Cassius had made his escape, hoping it was only a dream and he would see his love waiting for him.
But as the cool air hit his skin, he only saw the vast forest before him and heard the whistling wind through the trees. He felt hollow once again.
A rectangular object on the stairs caught his attention, and he bent to pick it up. It was Cassius's notebook, flipped open to the very last page. His gaze greedily drank in the sentences written by his lover's hand.
Once upon a time there was an exquisite prince
Who filled my wintry soul with all the colors of spring
He became my day, my night, my sun, my moon
My heart, my soul, my very bones
My Ever After ~ Riley Hart

I like your nail polish," you say, your voice playful, as she picks up her yet untouched notebook. ~ J.M. Darhower

For my stand-up, I always have my notebook with me and if something strikes me, I'll write it down. ~ Janeane Garofalo

I decided to write a myth."
"Have you figured out a topic? A moral conundrum?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
I heard Jack's chair creak.
"It's about how there's no such thing as redemption," I whispered. "How you deserve what you get,and no higher power can save you."
Mrs. Stone didn't answer immediately. The only sound in the room came from my own breathing. "What about heroes?"
I hunched over and scribbled a few lines on my notebook. "There are no heroes." Sure,it wasn't an optimistic paper,but it was the only thing I could write passionately about.
She was quiet for a moment again. When she spoke,her voice was gentle. "Okay. I'm excited to see what you put together."
I nodded.
"And,Mr. Caputo? Everything going well with the personal essay?"
I could only assume he nodded, because Mrs. Stone returned to the front of the classroom. My right hand started to tremble,and I clenched my pencil and began scribbling.
"You don't really believe that, do you?" Jack's voice was soft.
I lifted my head, allowing my eyes to meet his for the first time in weeks. "It doesn't matter what I believe." I looked down at my notebook.
"Wait," he said.
I turned back. "What?"
He shrugged,then spoke in a low murmur. "Just stop hiding behind your hair for a minute."
I closed my eyes,but I didn't turn away. "You're making things difficult, Jack Caputo," I whispered.
"At least you remember my name."
I remembered everyth ~ Brodi Ashton

Those reporters, writers, photographers, and editors are the best Americans I know. They cherish the ideals of their imperfect profession and of the Republic whose freedoms, equally imperfect in practice have so often made those ideals real. They want desperately to do good, honorable work. In spite of long hours and low pay, they are insistently professional. They are also brave.

I can't ever forget that in Indochina 65 journalists were killed in the course of recording the truth about that war. . . .Reporters and photographers did not stop dying when Vietnam was over. They have been killed in Lebanon and Nicaragua, in Bosnia and Peru, and in a lot of other places where hard rain falls.

I can't believe that these good men and women died for nothing. I know they didn't. They died because they were the people chosen by the tribe to carry the torch to the back of the cave and tell the others what is there in the darkness. They died because they were serious about the craft they practiced. They died because they believed in the fundamental social need for what they did with a pen, a notebook, a typewriter, or a camera. They didn't die to increase profits for the stockholders. They didn't die to obtain an invitation to some White House dinner for a social-climbing publisher. They died for us.

As readers or journalists, we honor them when we remember that their dying was not part of a plan to make the world cheaper, baser, or dumber. They died to ~ Pete Hamill

Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I've pressed onto them.
It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

I have always kept notebooks and I go back to them over and over. They are my compost pile of ideas. ~ Louise Erdrich

And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook Because my hand thinks I'm an artist But my heart knows I'm a poet It's just words they mean so little to me. ~ Conor Oberst

My train was late that day. the day I saw you drop your notebook. Had it been on schedule we never would have met. Maybe we were never meant to. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Sitting in my favorite coffeehouse with a new notebook and a hot cup of java is my idea of Heaven. ~ Libba Bray

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
[Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842] ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever ~ Nicholas Sparks

I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way. ~ Jennifer McMahon

sun caught the edge of his belt buckle, projecting a flash that shimmered across the desert plain. A shrill whistle sounded, and as I stepped to the right I caught sight of his shadow spilling a whole other set of sophisms from an entirely different angle. - I been here before, haven't I? He just sat there staring out at the plain. Son of a bitch, I thought. He's ignoring me. - Hey, I said, I'm not the dead, not a shade passing. I'm flesh and blood here. He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started writing. - You got to at least look at me, I said. After all, it is my dream. I drew closer. Close enough to see what he was writing. He had his notebook open to a blank page and three words suddenly materialized. Nope, it's mine. - Well, I'll be damned, I murmured. I ~ Patti Smith

What kind of person will you have to become to get all you want? In fact, why not write down a few thoughts on this in your notebook or journal. Write down the kinds of skills you'll need to develop and the knowledge you'll need to gain. The answers will give you some new goals for personal development.Remember this rule: Income Rarely Exceeds Personal Development. ~ Jim Rohn

It has today occurred to me that an amplifier using semiconductors rather than vacuum is in principle possible.
[Laboratory notebook, 29 Dec 1939.] ~ William Shockley

A book is not only written - after it's finished it starts writing you, the writer. You become its notebook, its sheet of paper on which it forces you to think and rethink your original ideas, your topics, your research, actually everything. ~ Sasa Stanisic

It seemed as though the secret of the universe had miraculously appeared right here at our feet, as though God's notebook had opened under our bench. ~ Yoko Ogawa

They never saw him drawing pictures of them naked at their antics in his notebook. ~ Virginia Woolf

Your goals and dreams must be written in journal or notebook. This will ignites a fire, divine power and divine strength within your soul. You will begin to reach out for your goals and dreams. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times. ~ Michael Morpurgo

The last thing I need is to morph into one of those people who's always wearing black and doodling guns and bombs on her notebook. ~ Lauren Oliver

Isn't that funny, to think that the people who have lived in your daydreams for the past two weeks, the people whom you've drawn in your chemistry notebook, to think that those people might not even know who you are? ~ Leila Sales

I have loved another with all my heart, and for me that has always been enough. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Whenever something good happens, write it down. Buy a special notebook ... and use it to list all the good in your life. ~ Peter McWilliams

He went down a step and sat with his back against his sweetheart's legs.

She put her notebook on his head. ~ Anna Gavalda

I found this." He put the briefcase on the table and opened the locks. She saw a stack of papers, an evidence bag with a red seal. He pulled a college notebook with a blue plastic cover from one of the pockets. Black fingerprint powder spotted the cover. "I tried to clean it up," he said, wiping the grime on the front of his sweater. "I'm sorry. It was in Allison's car and I..." He flipped through the pages, showing her the scrawled handwriting. "I can't," he said. "I just can't."
She realized that Will hadn't looked at her once since walking into the room. He had such an air of defeat about him, as if every word that came from his mouth caused him pain. ~ Karin Slaughter

I have to admit that this notebook, with its wilderness of blank pages, seems almost more threat than gift - for what can I write here that it will not hurt to remember? You ~ Jean Hegland

He continued with his research until he found a book entitled The Ultimate Dating Guide: How To Find The Perfect Girlfriend and Keep Them. He flipped through the contents and found the chapter called flirting with confidence. He took out a pen and notebook from his back pocket and scribbled some notes. Praise her body the book advised. Tell her you find her attractive. He decided he would record the key phrases and chose the right moment to recite these to Katie. He wrote you have come to bed eyes. Your eyes were the key to the soul and I like what I see ~ Annette J. Dunlea

I carry around a little journal with me, a little notebook and a pen and just write all the time. Not necessarily actually sitting down and writing lyrics, just free-form writing, whatever's going on in my mind. ~ Mandy Moore

You and I were different. We came from different worlds, and yet you were the one how taught me the value of love. You showed me what it was like to care for another, and I am a better man because of it. I don't want you to ever forget that. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home - and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed - breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music… All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Of course [photography] cannot create, nor express all we want to express. But it can be a witness of our passage on earth, like a notebook. ~ Mario Giacomelli

I write everything down. I e-mail the second I think of something, or I write notes in my BlackBerry calendar. I set up reminder alerts on my phone. And I have a notebook by my bedside so I can write down any last-minute ideas. ~ Giada De Laurentiis

The notebook smelled the way old books do, like dust and unrealized potential. ~ Alex Flinn

The first time I write my full name
Jacqueline Amanda Woodson
without anybody' help
on a clean white page in my composition notebook,
I know
If I wanted to
I could write anything
Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming
thoughts outside my head
becoming sentences
written by
Jacqueline Amanda Woodson ~ Jacqueline Woodson

To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times. The moment any idea or observation comes, you note it down. You keep the notebook by your bed, careful to record ideas that come in those moments of fringe awareness - just before falling asleep, or just upon waking. ~ Robert Greene

For a man who is "nobly born," happiness lies in taking on the fate of everyman; not through a desire for renunciation but a will to happiness. To be happy, you need time. Lots of time. Happiness too is a long patience. And it is the need for money that robs us of time. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be rich means having time to be happy when you are worthy of happiness. ~ Albert Camus

Use your notebook to breathe in the world around you. ~ Ralph Fletcher

I have a notebook, and I know what decisions will be made in pre-production. Everything is pre-determined in the pre-production period. I visually design the whole thing, and I know when things will happen. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I've been lucky, so lucky, working with [ ... ] Rachel (McAdams) on The Notebook. A big draw for me, when I do a film, is who am I going to be opposite, because there's only so much I can do on my own. ~ Ryan Gosling

My hands were starting to shake a little. Because I hadn't known that I knew these things. Just having a notebook to write them in, and having someone to write them to, made them all rise to the surface. ~ Rachel Cohn

But we'd had only so many nights together, and the notebook had only so many pages, and that world was never going to get any bigger. The truth was that I couldn't have kept her even if she'd lived. At the end, we'd both been pushing at the walls of our secret world, pushing at each other. We'd given each other everything we could. It wasn't enough for either of us anymore. ~ Jennifer R. Hubbard

Writing is so much more problematic than drawing, full of moral pitfalls, ambiguity, public responsibility. If you record a day of your life, does the decision to do so change the shape of the day? One of Doris Lessing's days in The Golden Notebook is fifty-four pages long. It's complete; the rest are summaries - the "impression" of a day foisted artfully upon the reader by providing a few details. Fiction is made this way - as lineal perspective gives the illusion of three dimensions in drawing. But does the selection of a day - that you begin by knowing you must remember and observe - really affect it? Do you change the balance, distort the truth? The period itself, its choice and selection, does that not in itself constitute a kind of misconstruction, and the rest follow subconsciously? ~ Kate Millett

And Mrs. Orton had the seizure right after you applied the lipstick?"
Reggie's voice was dead serious.
Drea nodded.
That little tidbit set off Cam's warning sirens. Not good.
Reggie closed his notebook and deposited it in his inner jacket pocket. "Can you think of anything else?"
Drea opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head.
Christ. So she had a possible motive, opportunity, means to kill Natasha Orton, and she was obviously holding something back. She may not be the only suspect, but even Cam had to admit she was a mighty good one. ~ Avery Flynn

How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many authors think nothing of saying, 'Ready, Miss Spelvin? Take dictation. Quote no comma Sir Jasper Murgatroyd comma close quotes comma said no better make it hissed Evangeline comma quote I would not marry you if you were the last person on earth period close quotes Quote well comma I'm not so the point does not arise comma close quotes replied Sir Jasper twirling his moustache cynically period And so the long day wore on period End of chapter.'
If I had to do that sort of thing I should be feeling all the time that the girl was saying to herself as she took it down, 'Well comma this beats me period How comma with homes for the feebleminded touting for custom on every side comma has a man like this succeeded in remaining at large mark of interrogation. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The essential key for writing is to write regularly - like it or not - great ideas come often by writing; releasing the subconscious - waiting for inspiration and ideas will not work, but it does help to have a notebook with you all the time for sudden brainstorms or inspiration. ~ Robert Marc Friedman

Sometimes I'll get ideas in the middle of the night. Sometimes at 3 in the morning I'll get up, and I have a notebook by my bed and have to write it down. I'll dream an idea. Sometimes I see an image online, and I think, 'OK, let's make that a three-layer cake!' ~ Rosanna Pansino

Belson came into the apartment with some crime-scene people and two homicide detectives.

"This guy," Charlie said, and looked at his notebook, "Spenser. He was impersonating a police officer."

Belson glanced at him. "We all thought that," Belson said, "when he was a cop. ~ Robert B. Parker

I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present. ~ Doris Lessing

Every great love starts with a great story... ~ Nicholas Sparks

Inspiration comes whenever it wants, even at the most unlikely times and in the most inappropriate situations. Often it arrives bit by bit. Therefore it must be anchored, and this is where a most valuable item makes its appearance: the notebook. ~ Piero Ferrucci

You will be back by then Ellen, wont you? I'm keeping this notebook safe for you because I want to believe you'll read it someday, and you'll know I never stopped hoping you'd come home. ~ Natasha Mac A'Bhaird

I want you to start a brand-new section in your notebooks and call it Mr. Browne's Precepts." He kept talking as we did what he was telling us to do. "Put today's date at the top of the first page. And from now on, at the beginning of every month, I'm going to write a new Mr. Browne precept on the chalkboard and you're going to write it down in your notebook. Then we're going to discuss that precept and what it means. And at the end of the month, you're going to write an essay about it, about what it means to you. So by the end of the year, you'll all have your own list of precepts to take away with you. ~ R.J. Palacio

It was on the steamer carrying him through the Golden Gate that he happened to reach down into the hole in the lining of the right pocket of his overcoat and discover the envelope that his brother had solemnly handed to him almost a month before. It contained a single piece of paper, which Thomas had hastily stuffed into it that morning as they all were leaving the house together for the last time, by way or in lieu of expressing the feelings of love, fear, and hopefulness that his brother's escape inspired. It was the drawing of Harry Houdini, taking a calm cup of tea in the middle of the sky, that Thimas had made in his notebook during his abortive career as a librettist. Josef studied it, feeling as he sailed toward freedom as if he weighed nothing at all, as if every precious burden had been lifted from him. ~ Michael Chabon