When anything of interest happens within or around me I make a mental note to tell you about it, and it is this habit of thinking of things in connection with you that gives them their meaning.
—Abram Tertz, to his wife while he is in prison, in A Voice from the Chorus
He always carried cards on which to make notes, three-by-six inch cards printed with his name that could be slipped into an inside pocket. … Had he not warned me when I forgot my own notebook that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write?
—Joan Didion, on her husband John Gregory Dunne, The Year of Magical Thinking
