Do you keep a notebook? I mean, for stray thoughts, ideas, quotes from books and what other people say, etc? A collection of jigsaw pieces for thought. I use those lovely little Moleskine pocket notebooks, 14 x 9 cms, bound in black, with lined pages.
I was looking through my current one today for a quote I couldn't remember, and thought you'd like a sample of a few entries, some my own, some other people's. Four of my own first:
The journey to complete self-consciousness is the main job of human beings.
The great writers are good at the summarizing significance. They pin-point the universal in the particular.
What people call 'stress' is simply not having time for - or not giving time to - encounters with themselves.
Happiness is the state of feeling that your life is as it should be. Unhappiness is the state of feeling that your life is not as it should be.
I'm not sure if the next one is mine or someone else's. I don't mention a source. But I'm lazy like that sometimes. In any case, if it isn't mine I wish it was, because it's a nice [i.e. precise] truth.
Sport is a form of idleness, for the spectator as well as the player.
Some by others:
'The novel is a meditation on existence seen through imaginary characters.' Milan Kundera.
'Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than constructing fictitious ones.' Ludwig Wittgenstein.
'Sometimes an expression has to be withdrawn from language and sent for cleaning - then it can be put back into circulation.' Ludwig Wittgenstein.
'I've nothing in my head but false teeth.' Samuel Beckett in old age when out of ideas.
'I'm up to the cataracts in work.' Samuel Beckett in old age when full of ideas.
'Nothing destroys love so quickly as embarrassment.' John Fowles.
'The essential rule of a good travel book: it must be about the traveller, not the travels. But it is not all about the traveller, nothing about the travels; but simply, that as the traveller travels, we progressively travel into the traveller.' John Fowles.
More another time, if you like.
About Me
- Aidan Chambers
- Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
- Author. For more information go to my website www.aidanchambers.co.uk
9 comments:
I do write down thoughts and ideas, but usually on small pieces of paper that I then lose. I should have little books such as you have, but I´d lose them too, I´m afraid.
With quotes it´s often that the opposite of what is said, is also true. Like the first: The journey to dismantle self-consiousness is the main job of human beings.
More another time, if you like.
Oh, yes please. I love having a peek into other people's miscellanies. (Possibly this is pure nosiness, ahaha, but nevertheless.)
I have a notebook, but I think writing down snippets on a regular basis is something which one is either given to or not. Mine is mostly for writing down bits of stories, and whereas I have some writer friends who have writing notebooks that contain plots, scribbled down ideas, etc, mine doesn't really work like that. I generally write chunks of actual story.
As for quotations - my work notebooks are more or less only that! But I rarely remember to write things down otherwise. My brain seems to like to put down something more... finished itsn't quite the right word, but in general I'll compose a lot of context in my head. And then fail to write it down at all, usually! Oh well.
The great writers are good at the summarizing significance. They pin-point the universal in the particular.
This is very true, and something I've been thinking of of late. I'd add to it, I think, that two of the things I most enjoy in writing are at different ends of the scale on this. That is to say, I love writers who can take an unusual, maybe even abnormal, situation and make it speak to me. Sometimes the strangeness of the setting is what highlights how universal the emotions and experiences really are. Conversely, I love those writers who can take the mundane and everyday and make it interesting. The latter is probably the harder, I think - at least, I find it so.
I like the quotes … and, as always, I have to ‘taste’ them for a while, as it were ‘getting round’ them, familiarising, as a dog would sniff a new bone to play with and .. Yes, I do like them very much!
And, as I see it, Aidan uses “self-consciousness” as meaning “self-awareness” (in the sense of “being fully aware of yourself as an individual, of your own being and actions and thoughts”). This is what I also found very beautiful in the Afterword to your novel “This is All”, Aidan, and I quote you: “And each [of the six novels of the Dance Sequence] is concerned with consciousness: they are stories of our interior life, our awareness of ourselves and the world around us, and how we know it and what we know” and “Love and the struggle to be as fully conscious as we can: the most important aspects of human being”.
I couldn’t agree more and especially the link between the two – love found and understanding of oneself through this love - could bring ultimate happiness!
In Ted’s quote I guess “self-consciousness” is used in another of its meanings, namely “excessively concerned with appearances, highly (too) conscious of the impression made on others and tending to act in a way that reinforces this impression” (as we would use it in “He was swinging his car keys in a self-conscious manner” and, of course, that kind of arrogance had better be dismantled, yes.
Anne Verbanck
I particuarly like the Sam Beckett ones. I still remember studying him for my drama A/s level last year, he always struck me as the type to contradict himself. I'll have to mention those quotes to my drama teacher, he's a bit in love with the playwright.
I do keep a notebook, sort of like a journal/poetry notings/random thoughts/ dreams/ anything collection.
I would like to read more of the quotes you have. My favourite quote of all time is: 'Die Donne scheint noch' ('The sun is still shining'), they were the last words of Sophie Scholl, member of the White Rose resistance group in Munich. She was executed in 1943.
Ali
I carry a striped notebook everywhere with me, in which I write ideas that I get during the day (which are sometimes quite a lot!).
As for quotes, I get one in my mailbox every day, and sometimes it's really good.
I do love the quotes of Rabindranath Tagore in 'Fireflies'. I used one in my first novel: "Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree."
As the book is about a forest that's been threatened with destruction, I really thought that one appropriate.
Inge
Perhaps I'd better start keeping a notebook.
Now I just keep loosing all my 'ingenious' thoughts, ideas and catchy first sentences, as they wander around the house on small notes, halftorn envelopes, pieces of paper, etc...
Inge from the typewriter :-)
Today I decided not to walk to work. Too wet and windy.
I read several years ago about something described as "commonplace" books, which I took to mean a notebook where one jotted interesting quotes, story ideas, and the like, which was something separate from one's regular diary or journal. I began keeping one (in a black-and-white-spotted, hard-cardboard-cover notebook) and am now on #3 or #4. They are rather haphazard as to when I update them, but I rather enjoy having them as some sort of, well, "treasury." --Tracy in Wisconsin
Here are two of my favourites:
"If you know before you look, you cannot see for knowing." Terry Frost
and
"Anything that's any good has to be discovered in the process of writing it." Philip Pullman
My favorite thing I have ever written in any of my notebooks is
"Wow. This is completely absurd. I love it!" -M. Walker.
Not nearly as, er, sophisticated as anything you've told us about, but I think it's still worth sharing. Eh?
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