Yellow Notebook

“Fear—of being drawn to another man whose phlegmatic nature will limit and distort mine—or for whose sake I will limit and distort myself.“

It's refreshingly intimate to read a text that hasn't been crafted for an audience. You can no longer indulge in speculation at the author's intention—instead you're released to gaze at the fragmentary insights, de-focusing your vision (as for a Magic Eye), and marvelling as a picture of a life emerges.

I recognised the brutality of unchecked self-criticism as it presented itself here. Garner deals constantly with criticism of her work and her worth as a writer, but remains her own harshest critic.

I am the only person in the world who carries round an inventory of my crimes. Everyone else is busy with their own.

When I was not yet ‘a writer' I used to write colossal, twenty-page letters to people. Now I communicate on the backs of postcards. This thought made me feel quite cheerful, as if I had imperceptibly, over years, and not by the exercise of will, rechannelled wasted energy into a more useful course—but now I mess with the taps, I keep them turned off, or let just a tiny trickle escape.

I like people when they are in a great mass, thousands of lonely or rather solitary blobs, each one with ‘le front barré de souci'. (The forehead crossed out with worry)