How And Why To Keep A “Commonplace Book”

Commonplace books were a portal through which educated people interacted with the world. They drew on their notebooks in conversation and used them to connect bits of knowledge from different sources and to inspire their own thinking.

The practice of writing down one’s thoughts and notes to help make sense of the world has a long legacy. For centuries, artists and intellectuals from Leonardo da Vinci to Virginia Woolf, from John Locke to Octavia Butler, have recorded the ideas they found most interesting in a book they carried around with them, known as a “commonplace book.”

I transfer all my quotes and passage to a commonplace book (more on this later).