For about twenty-five years I have been copying sentences into the back pages of whatever notebook I happen to be using, using mostly for other purposes…. Of course there are sentences elsewhere in these books: even the briefest, most telegraphic, verbless note is a sentence of sorts. But the end-of-notebook sentences are different, even if someone them come from books I’m reviewing and so on. Unconnected to duty or deadlines, to projects per se, they compose a parallel timeline — of what?

I suppose the word is: affinity.

From the first chapter of Brian Dillon’s Suppose a Sentence, describing a practice that I’m emulating, to some extent, here on this blog. Again, closer to the end of the chapter:

So, not a treasury, then — something closer, I hope, to a kind of commonplace book, product of haphazard notation, ad hoc noticing.