![At any rate, nothing was more characteristic of him [Walter Benjamin] in the thirties than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him and in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of "pearls" and "coral." On occasion he read from them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection.](/assets/img/quote-photos/at-any-rate-nothing-was-more-characteristic-of-him-walter-benjamin-in-the-thir.jpg)
Related Quotes
notebook running writing
I write on a computer, but I've run the complete gambit. When I was very young, I wrote with a ballpoint pen in school notebooks. Then I got pretentious and started writing with a dip pen on parchment (I wrote at least a novel-length poem that way). Moved on to a fountain pen. Then a typewriter, then an electric self-correct. Then someone gave me a word processor and I was amazed at being able to fit ten pages on one of those floppy discs. Charles de Lint
notebook growing-up artist
Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand.
notebook real character
As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.
notebook motivation powerful
Goddard represented a unique combination of visionary dedication and technological brilliance. He studied physics because he needed physics to get to Mars. In reading the notebooks of Robert Goddard, I am struck by how powerful his exploratory and scientific motivations were - and how influental speculative ideas, even erroneous ones, can be on the shaping of the future. Carl Sagan
notebook pages way
Looking at and shaping your own work is a very intuitive process. You see something you've written in your notebook. It's there on the page and either feels right or it doesn't, and it's hard sometimes to go beyond that and discover why it feels that way. Chad Harbach
notebook running block
Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself.
notebook morning thinking
What I try very hard to do is have an hour or so in the morning when I leave the house and don't have my phone with me. I'll go sit in a cafe and read and handwrite in my notebook and not be facing a screen. My head will be clear. I will be able to hear myself think. Because honestly for the rest of the day it's just screens, screens, screens. Jami Attenberg
notebook dad teaching
My dad started teaching me how to play guitar when I was 13 years old. When he'd go to work, he'd map out guitar cords on a piece of notebook paper. I'd sit down and look at it every day and practice while he was gone. Jason Aldean
notebook prayer heart
When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished in my prayer life. But when I stop getting eloquent and give God less theology and shut up and just gaze upward and wait for God to speak to my heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook and take notes on what God is saying to my heart. Aiden Wilson Tozer
reading book thinking
I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them. Carlos Fuentes
reading book new-books
Read and Re-Read--"Re-reading, we always find a new book. C. S. Lewis
reading glasses vision
Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision. Agnes Repplier
reading character incidents
For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.
reading world too-much
Reading is a heady thing. You can be into the action of someone's thoughts and take a whole trip down someone's ruminations while seconds tick by in the world that they're in, but you can't really do that in film. Some films can, but not too much. Alan Tudyk
reading serious kind
For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial. Charlotte Bronte
reading mind doe
Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind. Charles Dudley Warner
reading book lambs
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. Charles de Gaulle
reading writing character
Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment. Charles Dickens
choices justified introduction
Less depends upon the choice of words than upon this, that their introduction shall be justified by pregnant theorems. Carl Friedrich Gauss
choices relation
We cannot fully understand the relations of time and choice until we are beyond both.
choices customers feeling good leaving stores themselves walked
We want our customers leaving our stores feeling better than when they walked in the door, and feeling good about themselves and the choices they've made. Paul Clayton
choices want trouble
It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
choices actors playing-someone
You always have to make positive choices as an actor, even when you're playing someone who may not be doing the best things. Aaron Tveit
choices president crystals
I'll be honest with you, I don't agree with President Obama about everything. But I've gotten to know him, I've worked with him, and the choice is crystal clear. Charlie Crist
choices age dies
Each age has its choice of the death it will die.
choices accountability
Everybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's the choices we make that define who we really are.
choices fruit good-intentions
Good intentions are very mortal and perishable things. Like very mellow and choice fruit, they are difficult to keep. Charles Simmons