Top 100 Writing Journal Quotes
#1. Writing journal is for those people who find no interest in living a life of victimhood and limited personal freedom.
Deepak Burfiwala
#2. I always loved writing, but I feel like I really started writing when I got my BlackBerry . It was the first time I could take these crazy thoughts in my head and actually get them out. This little device became my journal on the road.
Duff McKagan
#3. I write constantly, but only in my journals. I have three of them: one for travel, one for home, and one I write in before bed. But the last thing I want is other people reading it ... What's really fun is reading your journal, like a year later ...
Cameron Diaz
#4. And maybe these words have become something more than emails; maybe they are a kind of journal. Writing to you is like writing to another piece of myself.
Amy Reed
#5. I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn't say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren't many.
Kimberly Novosel
#6. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers.
Taylor Swift
#7. If you want to write ... keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair.
Madeleine L'Engle
#8. There are certain things that make me relax, like writing my journal. That's the only time that I'm relaxing. It's the only time I really get to examine myself.
Jessica Simpson
#9. Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform.
Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission
Judith-Victoria Douglas
#11. Then he stretched himself alongside her to smoke a cigarette with all the ceremony of an opium dreamer.
Anais Nin
#12. All right, you caught me. I'm secretly obsessed with you and spend all my free time writing about you in my journal. 'Dear Diary, today Will was an ass for the 467th day in a row. He's so dreamy
Elizabeth Scott
#13. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"?
David Mitchell
#14. Painting for process is the visual equivalent of journal writing, done not for the sake of being seen or published, but purely for the telling itself.
Michele Cassou
#15. Writing is an outlet, but it's not an outlet of escape. People keep a journal when they want to escape. I write to rub my face in it.
Amelia Gray
#16. I throw ideas out into the open when I really should just be writing them down in a journal.
Dan Deacon
#17. A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.
Stephen Vincent Benet
#18. Journal writing is, foremost, a way to order and reframe perspective.
Alexandra Johnson
#19. For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.
Ruth Ozeki
#20. I wish I could keep a journal. I have a lot of journals with one page half written in. I sometimes will write myself a quick email on my Blackberry when I think of something.
Louis C.K.
#21. I write to prove that we lived. I write both to remember and to let go. I write because I can't stop, not until this horrible story of ours is over and we're safe at home.
Courtney M. Privett
#22. The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.
Trent Reznor
#23. I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot ... and memory is important.
Judy Collins
#24. Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
#25. And instead of dying Immediately after they shot him, he would go on to survive several days solely because of the cold that January. Maybe that's why we are drawn to those who posses the coldest of hearts ... In effort to survive.
Bethany Brookbank
#27. I do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.
Dani Shapiro
#28. Writing a journal means that facing your ocean you are afraid to swim across it, so you attempt to drink it drop by drop.
George Sand
#29. I started writing a journal, and I was learning so much along the way. How to deal with your family, how to deal with your friends.
Tom Brokaw
#30. Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.
[Interview, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2009]
Cormac McCarthy
#31. I never wrote anything down. I never kept a diary, never kept a journal. I did write one letter home about touring with the Doors that I used as a reference for the book for some details there, and then I was glad I had that, but that was it.
Linda Ronstadt
#32. Be a collector of good ideas. Keep a journal. If you hear a good idea, capture it, write it down. Don't trust your memory.
Jim Rohn
#33. There were times, in the beginning, when I used my journal as a wailing wall, but I learned not to immortalize the darkness. Rereading it was counterproductive. What I needed was a place in which to collect the light.
Phyllis Theroux
#34. Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
Jane Yolen
#35. Until you take a pen to write, then you will see the miracle of writing.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#36. Gratitude isn't just a feeling, it's an action. Expressing gratitude by writing in a journal, taking a photo, or shooting a video creates a lasting impression that can bring more gratitude into the world-for children and adults.
Janice Kaplan
#37. My wife Cecily Adams was dying of cancer, my daughter Madeline was struggling to overcome an autism diagnosis, and my father was dying, all at the same time. Writing the journal was a cathartic experience, and an extremely positive one.
Jim Beaver
#38. Keep a gratitude journal. Write down at least three things a day you are either thankful for, made you smile or genuinely inspired you.
Robert Holden
#39. My touring isn't about collecting souvenirs and always being on the go. My souvenirs are writing in my journal and creating new music, because that fits easily into my backpack when I'm travelling around the world. It's something that I can share later with fans or with future family members.
Jason Mraz
#40. I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Geneve, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe.
Francois Gautier
#42. A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.
Anthony Doerr
#43. He began to write his thoughts and observations concerning the day's events [ ... ] It helped him better understand everything he had seen and done over the course of the day.
Christopher Paolini
#44. I used to love writing in my journal.
Tyra Banks
#45. Journal writing is a wonderful pathway to self-awareness.
Rand Olson
#46. And you never fall behind?"
"Of course I do. But I always feel guilty when that happens. After all, my journal is the oldest and most loyal friend I have. And it never interrupts me when I'm speaking," he added, with a boyish grin.
Zack Love
#47. I never sit and fill a journal with lyrics. Most of the time I'm trying to write a feeling, not a story. I'm not necessarily trying to describe the details of a place or event so much as the feeling of the thing. It is a kind of weird alchemy that is elusive until it feels right.
Matt Berninger
#48. Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.
Natalie Goldberg
#49. First organizing it on paper isn't just academic, it's an applied prerequisite for manifestation.
T.F. Hodge
#50. I still love writing in my journal and wearing sparkly dresses and looking at old chandeliers.
Taylor Swift
#51. I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.
Annie Dillard
#52. Putting words on paper regularly is part of the necessary discipline of writing. A journal is a great way to do that.
Pearl Cleage
#53. Any experience, which is not written, will be lost in time. Rich literature is lost forever.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#54. The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I'd hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink.
Rachel L. Schade
#55. Blogging is different from both journal-writing and writing for print. It's more fun than either of those. The freedom to write whatever I want and the unmediated connection with readers are the payoff.
Kate Christensen
#56. If you're serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured and unique individual, keep a journal. Don't trust your memory. When you listen to something valuable, write it down. When you come across something important, write it down.
Jim Rohn
#57. Writing a journal article combines all the elements that deter motivation: The probability of success is low; the likelihood of criticism and rejection is high; and the outcome, even if successful, isn't always rewarding.
Paul J. Silvia
#58. The best person to write for is yourself - and what better place to start than in a journal.
E.L. James
#59. I remember telling my creative writing teacher that you never want to have a journal, because if you lose it, then someone's going to know all your secrets. And then she stopped using a journal, but I always write everything down ... Anytime I travel, I try and fill up notepads.
Garrett Hedlund
#60. Stop trying to get me to write about 'decent courageous people'
read the Ladies' Home Journal for those! ... I believe in going through and facing the worst, not hiding from it.
Sylvia Plath
#61. Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
Stephen Covey
#62. For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading.
May Sarton
#63. I do have a journal, that I write all my thoughts in every day. So that's kind of something. I also have a burn box where I write secrets down and put it in a box.
Miranda Cosgrove
#64. For years I've advocated keeping a gratitude journal, writing down five things every day that brought pleasure and gratefulness.
Oprah Winfrey
#65. Once you're done being president, you tend to want to defend your record more than plumb your inner feelings. I find it hard to imagine Obama going home at night and writing sensitive, introspective journal entries about his meeting with John Boehner.
Gail Collins
#66. An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who's the better writer?
Jason Lutes
#67. I love going to the movies and being moved emotionally. I like my work, singing and writing in my journal.
Elizabeth Daily
#68. Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.
Sara Sheridan
#69. The Journal is not essentially a confession, a story about oneself. It is a Memorial. What does the writer have to remember? Himself, who he is when he is not writing, when he is living his daily life, when he is alive and real, and not dying and without truth.
Maurice Blanchot
#70. You ought to stop everything and write the sacred-words as its flashes in your mind.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#71. Must look into the botanical background of substance known as hashish, I jotted in my journal, writing by the light of candles that grew incessantly jewel-like even as protean wafts of incense approached my snout like platters of ripe fruits borne on the back of Nubian pages.
Tom Robbins
#72. The journals may give you an opportunity to express your feelings without inviting further tables.
David Patneaude
#73. I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved.
Francine Mathews
#74. In the absence of my beloved and much-derided crime board,' she said, 'I've been reduced to writing things in my journal like some sort of medieval peasant.' She
T E Kinsey
#75. I had to be the world's biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that?
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#76. If you submit an
article to a major refereed clinical journal and it is accepted
upon first submission without a single revision, let me
know and I will take you to dinner the next time you are in
Portland, Oregon.
Robert B. Taylor
#77. After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.
Joyce Carol Oates
#78. Write your dreams in journal,note book, card or on a cork. When you pen down your dreams, an a inner strength and divine power is activated for your to work towards the fulfillment of your dreams.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#79. But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it.
(Online journal entry for January 31, 2009)
Neil Gaiman
#80. Until you begin to write, then you will see the beauty of writing.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#81. The act of self-expression - through writing a journal or letters - often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#82. I believe the term "blog" means more than an online journal. I believe a blog is a conversation. People go to blogs to read AND write, not just consume.
Michael Arrington
#83. When we saw our plane on TV as breaking news, it was the most surreal experience. A lot of the women were crying. There was a gentleman who was writing in his journal and crying. Seeing that isn't easy.
Taryn Manning
#84. That IS what journal writing is all about - showing ourselves to God.
Frank McCourt
#85. Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we've thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#86. To Nobody, then, will I write my Journal! since to Nobody can I be wholly unreserved, to Nobody can I reveal every thought, every wish of my heart, with the most unlimited confidence, the most unremitting sincerity, to the end of my life!
Fanny Burney
#87. 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
#88. I have a thing - I call it magic - but I feel like I can write stuff down in the middle of the night and wake up and it happens. I write what I want in my journal.
Ester Dean
#89. It seems as if I can only thing if I write my journal, it just connects the part of my head that is busy doing things with the part that is busy thinking about everything else. I know all these pepole are so busy because they love each other and me. We are a noisy crowd of love
Nancy E. Turner
#90. I am carrying out my plan, so long formulated, of keeping a journal. What I most keenly wish is not to forget that I am writing for myself alone. Thus I shall always tell the truth, I hope, and thus I shall improve myself. These pages will reproach me for my changes of mind.
Eugene Delacroix
#91. Sometimes I was in a mood to write a song as if I was writing in my journal and reveal certain parts of me that I was ready to reveal.
Madonna Ciccone
#92. Sometimes I journal three pages, sometimes I journal thirty pages, but I'm writing all the time, and whatever's happening is happening in real time for me.
Nikki Sixx
#93. These empty pages are your future, soon to become your past. They will read the most personal tale you shall ever find in a book.
Anonymous
#94. Writing in a journal activates the narrator function of our minds. Studies have suggested that simply writing down our account of a challenging experience can lower physiological reactivity and increase our sense of well-being, even if we never show what we've written to anyone else.
Daniel J. Siegel
#96. I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.
Jonathan Carroll
#97. I try to decipher if my life lives through my words or if my words become my life.
Shannon Lynette
#98. I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.
Elmore Leonard
#99. The main thing to do at the end of the day is to write in a gratitude journal all the things that you are grateful for that happened that day. You will invite even more abundance into your life.
Deepak Chopra
#100. I wasn't writing home. I wasn't writing a death letter, either. I was writing a death journal, a piece of fiction meant for my family and my fiancee, Sara.
Clint Van Winkle
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