A Quote by Jonathan Stroud

When I was young, I kept a diary for about 10 years and I had to write in it every day. Even on days when nothing seemed to happen, I made myself think of something to put in it.
When I was young, my father used to say, ‘If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.’ I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.
I don't want to overplay the diary's significance, but it's a really helpful batting aid. It's not an obsession because I don't spend more than 10 or 20 minutes writing a day - and not necessarily every day. I might write in it three days in a row and then not the next four. It depends on the situation.
I think more and more that I get to challenge myself and kind of raise the standard for myself every season. Even the term 'fashion' is about change. It's about newness. And what that newness means is different every 10 years, every five years.
I think more and more that I get to challenge myself and kind of raise the standard for myself every season. Even the term fashion is about change. It's about newness. And what that newness means is different every 10 years, every five years.
I think there are beautiful moments. These days everybody expects that fairy tale , that you're going to be together forever with somebody and I don't really subscribe to that. I'd love that to happen if that happened, but 10 years is enough. 10 years is a good thing with somebody, I think. It's a nice thing. A lot of good love can happen in 10 years.
I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.
I write pretty fast, probably faster than most people. But I might think about something for six hours, then write it in 20 minutes. So did I write for six hours and 20 minutes, or just 20 minutes? I used to write absolutely every day, except for days when I had to travel or something.
I always kept a diary - not a diary like, 'Dear Diary, we got up at 5 A.M., and I wore the weird hair again and that white dress! Hi-yeee!' I'd just write.
It took me 14 years to write 'Crazy Brave' because I kept changing the form and I also kept running away from the story. I said I don't really want to write about myself. But it's about writing about memory.
I need a moment of time for myself every day, like a child playing with his things. When I travel, I routinely find a quiet place, open my diary and write something in it.
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.
Even now, at 82 years old, if I don't learn something every day, you know what I think? It's a day lost. Now, I don't practice every day. I just take the guitar, swear at it. But I should be swearing at myself. But I fool with music. I'm doing something musically all the time. And my ears are wide open for anything I can hear.
I'm so old that when I started keeping a diary they were in actual books, and I think that's one the reasons that I've never written about sex. Because early on you had to worry that someone was going to find your diary, so it's bad enough to be writing like Joan Didion, but writing like Joan Didion about sex acts you'd performed with somebody you had known for 20 minutes, that's a bit worse. So I would write in my diary, "I met J. and we had sex five times last night." But I would never write about what we did.
I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit.
Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.
Before I gave birth to Hope, I had a miscarriage. The pain was so enormous, I had to write myself out of it. I kept a diary and did not feel entirely complete until Hope was born.
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