The Notebook Quotes

“Leonardo knew that the best way to look at something analytically is to draw it. Water fascinated him, so he drew”
― Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

“And take a note… with slight strokes in a little book that you should always carry with you… preserved with great care; for the forms, and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters.”
― Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

“As simple as writing down three positive things about a day, this exercise is widely prescribed by therapists and educational psychologists working with adults or children in difficult circumstances.”
― Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

“People who are under stress, who are worried about stuff – that’s taking up their working memory,’ he tells me. ‘They’re not paying attention to what they’re doing, where they are going, so they’re more likely to have injuries, or do poorly on tests, and so forth.”
― Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

“A Moleskine-style notebook weighs in at under 500 g, representing about 750 g of emissions, which is not much in the daily run of things. You need to scribble through twelve notebooks before you generate climate change emissions equivalent to a quarter-pounder beef burger.”
― Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

“We rarely consider the Renaissance in terms of its technological advances but the era’s engineers made much more of a difference to the lives of ordinary people than the great painters or humanist thinkers. Homes were now built with fireplaces and glazed windows; cities with water supplies. New pump designs allowed mines to be sunk, and salt, coal and metal ores to be extracted; new mill designs allowed water and wind power to be harnessed to drain marshes, press olives, or saw planks; new industries – not least, paper manufacture – spread across the continent.”
― Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper