Since the note is in my notebook, it presumably has some meaning to me.

Taking notes, I’ve come to realize, is a form of collecting. I’ve never been interested in collecting physical things, but when it comes to beautiful literary quotes, I have thousands of notebook entries.

What I write is all mine, it’s a living thing, it’s an extension of me that wanders out into the world. It is desire turned inwards instead of outwards, focused instead of displaced. It’s a way to access self-knowledge and self-respect.

See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write — on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage... See more