At Megaquotes, there’s quite a list of quotes about writing. The ones below made me think about my own notebooks:

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. ~Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948 (All those nice fresh notebooks that didn’t seem as beautifully-filled as I wanted them to be!)

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. ~Norbet Platt

Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies. ~Emme Woodhull-Bäche (Look at how much time people spend figuring out which pen is best for a Moleskine!)

It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order. ~Ann Beattie, Picturing Will, 1989

Let me walk through the fields of paper
touching with my wand
dry stems and stunted
butterflies….
~Denise Levertov, “A Walk through the Notebooks”

An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts. ~Juvenal, Satires

I keep little notepads all over the place to write down ideas as soon as they strike, but the ones that fill up the quickest are always the ones at my nightstand. ~Emily Logan Decens