30 Quotes About Journaling

Ready to start a journaling habit but looking for some more inspiration? Here are 30 quotes about journaling to get your creative juices flowing.

1. “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” – Anne Frank
2. “Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.” – Julia Cameron
3. “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth
4. “Sometimes the only paper will listen to you.” – Anonymous
5.  “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” – Natalie Goldberg
6. “Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it” – Natalie Goldberg
7. “I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideals and my fantasies.” – Anne Frank
8. “Preserve your memories, keep them well, what you forget you can never retell.” – Louisa May Alcott
9. “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” – Ernest Hemingway
10.  “If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you.” – Madeleine L’Engle
11. “The best time to begin keeping a journal is whenever you decide to.” – Hannah Hinchman
12. “Writing is like breathing, it’s possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.” – Julia Cameron
13. “Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.” – Christina Baldwin
14. “Journal writing, when it becomes a ritual for transformation, is not only life-changing but life-expanding.” – Jennifer Williamson
15.  “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” – Joan Didion
16. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” – Pablo Picasso
17. “The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.” – Virginia Woolf
18. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” – Anaïs Nin
19. “Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma.” – Ernst Junger
20. “Having the courage to reckon with our emotions and to rumble with our stories is the path to writing our brave new ending.” – Brene Brown
21. “Journaling helps you to remember how strong you truly are within yourself.” – Asad Meah
22.  “Tears are words that need to be written.” – Paulo Coelho
23. “Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself – what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.” – Warsan Shire
24. “We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul.” – Julia Cameron
25. “Don’t bend, don’t water it down, don’t try to make it logical, don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” – Franz Kafka
26. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou
27. “Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you’ll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books.” – Henry David Thoreau
28. “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” – Brene Brown
29. “Writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things – childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves – that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.” – Salman Rushdie
30. “We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.” – Julia Cameron

Your turn: what is your favorite quote about journaling?

Updated: Apr 11, 2025 @ 10:02 pm