"Is writing to yourself a healthier insanity than talking to yourself? Would Amiel say so? Gide or Pepys? […] In a diary you may go to greet death in the most slovenly state of undress and disease, your language out of reach of any public reading, your own eye kind, accustomed to your own wastes and malodorous ailments, almost incapable of offense, incurably forgiving."
