on note-taking

Your natural salience filter is a great determinant of what’s most alive to you. If you begin to rely on any other filter, you will increasingly record what seems like it should be interesting according to some preexisting criteria rather than what organically sticks to your mind. This is a tradeoff. It is often not a worthy tradeoff.

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.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly com pulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only acciden tally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.