Diarists

“At the time, I had recently escaped a diagnosis that would have rendered me not myself. When faced with the threat of becoming a different person if my body misbehaved, perhaps I understood that my body could no longer reliably act as a medium for what it contained. This is (possibly) why I abandoned the elaborate plans I’d had for a novel and instead began a diary.” —Heidi Julavits

“But I’ve always loved reading other people’s diaries. Growing up I was drawn to the autobiographical novels of the Belgian author Amélie Nothomb, who wrote about her childhood in Japan and China, with some artistic license, in books decorated with images of herself as a girl; she happened to look just like me.” —Amalia Ulman

“In my late teens, overburdened by an excess of life, I built a storage facility for it: a diary. After I wrote things down I could safely forget them. It was the only relief I ever found, and I kept at it.” —Sarah Manguso