Noun

Singular diary

Plural diaries

diary (plural diaries)

1. A daily log of experiences, especially those of the writer.
2. The method or media used to keep such experiences.

   They kept separate diaries. His was on paper and her diary was on her computer's hard drive.

3. (British, Canadian) A calendar or appointment book.

Derived terms

• diarist

A diary is a record (originally in written book format) with discreet entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries undertaken for institutional purposes play a role in many aspects of human civilization, including government records (e.g., Hansard), business ledgers and military records. Schools or parents may teach or require children to keep diaries in order to encourage the expression of feelings and to promote thought.

Generally the term is today employed for personal diaries, in which the writer may detail more personal information and normally intended to remain private or to have a limited circulation amongst friends or relatives. The word "journal" may be sometimes used for "diary," but generally one writes daily in a diary, whereas journal-writing can be less frequent.

Whilst a diary may provide information for a memoir, autobiography or biography, it is generally written not with the intention of being published as it stands, but for the author's own use. In recent years however there is internal evidence in some diaries (e.g., those of Alan Clark, Tony Benn or Simon Gray) that they are written with eventual publication in mind, with the intention of self-vindication (pre- or posthumous) or simply for profit.

Diaries are highly varied, from business notations, to listings of weather and daily personal events, to inner explorations of the human psyche, to expressions of one's deepest self to records of thoughts and ideas.

By extension the term diary is also used to mean a printed publication of a written diary; and may also refer to other terms of journal including electronic formats (e.g., blogs).

Diary is a 2003 novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk.

• "Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.”

• "And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people. [...] It got until she didn’t belong anywhere. It got so nobody was good enough, refined enough, real enough. [...] Nothing was as real as her imagined world."

• "You can’t put up with anything less than lovely. You spend your life running, avoiding, escaping. That quest for something pretty. A cheat. A cliché."

• "If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion."

• "Leonardo's Mona Lisa is just a thousand thousand smears of paint. Michelangelo's David is just a million hits with a hammer. We're all of us a million bits put together the right way."

• "It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace."

• Grace says, "We all die." She says, "The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

• "There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics."

• "What you don't understand you can make mean anything."

• "Today is the longest day of the year-but anymore, everyday is. The weather today is increasing concern followed by fullblown dread. The man calling from Long Beach, he says his bathroom is missing."

• "Dear sweet Peter. Can you feel this?"

• “... you people with your ex-wives and stepchildren, your blended families and failed marriages, you’ve ruined your world and now you want to ruin mine...”

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sun Oct 11 20:06:56 2009