I journal my joy, and my joy expands exponentially forevermore. So be it.

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.

And so I just kept writing to myself.

The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.

Once a day, especially in the early years of life and study, call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.

Who we are and where we want to go determines what we do now and what we accomplish over time.

The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I'd hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink.

The true purpose of illustrated journaling [is] to celebrate your life. No matter how small or mundane or redundant, each drawing and little essay you write to commemorate an event or an object or a place makes it all the more special.

I write awe-thoughts flowing in my mind.

Let’s end the notion that ideas have no value unless they turn into a business or have some other practical use. Save them all in a beautiful book like Leonardo did. You might want to give them away someday, perhaps to someone who needs an idea. Or your great-great-grandchildren might love knowing what a fascinating mind you had. Or your biographer might be very happy after you’re gone.

Loneliness of heartIn the still of the night my heart doth cry out, who can hear it for time is far spent. In the darkness in the shadow of the depth I find isolation and fear...

We dig holes for ourselves, of comfortable living, and it’s hard to see just how deep down you are until you suddenly want to take a look at the world up there, some fresh airand realise you can’t get up. You’re too far down.

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are.

He captures memories because if he forgets them, it's as though they didn't happen.

All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly--not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things the outer limits would suffice.

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least, in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured.

She had her image… and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper—and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further.

Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said. And anyway, when was a journal ever honest? "It either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie, " he said, "or a lot of lies to cover a single truth.

You can tell it any way you want, he said, you can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you won't be lying, though you might be telling two stories at once.

This is what you do when you journal. You are recording God’s grand, epoch-spanning redemptive story as it unfolds in your limited, temporal sphere of existence here on earth. Your journal has the potential to record the continuation of the Holy Spirit’s work in our world!

When Jesus put on flesh, He made human existence “sacred.” Thus, when you are inhabited by Jesus through His Holy Spirit, your life takes on the “sacred” characteristic as well. This does not mean that you become God or incapable of sinning like Jesus was in His incarnation. However, it does mean that something is qualitatively different about you at the core.

All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me, and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. I wanted the open road and new beginnings every day.

The people that surround us mirror who we are.

I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn’t say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren’t many.

If I can only write my memoir once, how do I edit it?

Successful journals break the deadlock of introspective obsession

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

It's a way of clearing the palate. Kids come into the classroom with all this other stuff in their hands. If they write it down for 10 minutes they become much more available for whatever it is we want to do in the class.

* Thoughts are energy, energy is matter, and matter doesn’t disappear.* Pay attention to coincidence.* You can choose your identity." And a recent one: Only the present moment matters.

It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it.

....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do.