I do not believe that keeping a journal is for the young. There is always the danger of bending over oneself like Narcissus and drowning in self-indulgence. If a journal is to have any value either for the writer or for the potential reader, the writer must be able to be objective about what he experiences on the pulse. For the whole point of a journal is this seizing events on the wing. Yet the substance will come not from narration but from the examination of experience, and an attempt, at least to reduce it to essence. Secondly – and this is curious– what delights the reader in a journal is often minute particulars. Very few young people observe anything except themselves very closely. Then the context – by that I mean all that one brings to an experience of reading and thinking and feeling – is apt to be thin for the young. And to get to the nub, I guess what I am suggesting is that rarely is there enough of a self there. – The house by the sea, a journal, May Sarton