The Zibaldone

Somebody else already wrote it down.

A commonplace book, left open on the desk. People copy lines into it — from poems, from books, from each other — and beside each one they write what it is for. Every line in here says where it came from and how we checked it, because a quotation nobody can trace is just a nice-sounding sentence with a famous name stuck on the end.

The word

Zibaldone is Italian, and it means roughly a heap of things — the name given to the miscellany notebooks Italians have kept since about the fourteenth century, of which Leopardi’s enormous one is the famous example. Merchants kept them. So did poets. They are unruled, unsorted and unfinished on purpose: recipes next to accounts next to a line of verse somebody liked.

In English the same object is a commonplace book, which our own glossary has had an entry for since 2022. Montaigne kept one and more or less invented the essay out of it. Marcus Aurelius kept one and it turned into the Meditations. It is not a filing system. It is what you reach for when you cannot find your own words and somebody else’s will do.

This room exists because somebody in our community asked for it: a quote bank, quotes for any state of mind. That is what this is. The desk and the rules are ours; the good lines are everybody’s.

What this book will and will not do

A bank of quotations is the most dangerous shape of page on this street, and not for any reason you would notice from the outside. So the rules are in the generator rather than in somebody’s good intentions, and they are written here so you can hold us to them.

30 words

is the longest quotation this room will carry, and tools/make-zibaldone.py refuses a longer one rather than trusting anybody to remember. A bank of quotations is the shape of page that turns into republishing somebody’s book one reasonable-looking entry at a time. Where the line is not enough, the book is linked.

A line from a song is a line like any other. It keeps to the same word limit, names its record or its printing, and says whose it is. Short quotation with credit is fair use, and the responsibility for what goes in this book is ours.
Every line names its printing, not just its title. These texts differ between printings and a title is not a source. The Dickinson in this book is the proof: it is in the second series, not the first, and the only thing that found that out was going and looking. The Thoreau is the other proof — the version everybody quotes has somebody marching to a beat, and he wrote neither word.
Every line says how it was checked, and when. The public domain ones were read out of the transcription named on the card. The ones still in copyright were read off our own published pages, or read in the book itself by the person the card names, who gives the page. An unchecked quotation sitting among checked ones looking identical is the thing this room is built to prevent, so there is nowhere for one to hide.
Nothing here is ranked, counted or voted on. No favourites, no most-copied, no top of the bank, no number on a card. A quote bank is the shape of thing that grows one, and this room will never grow a leaderboard — refusing one matters because a leaderboard would turn the one page meant to meet somebody where they are into a popularity contest between other people’s grief.
There are no faces in this room. A quote bank for states of mind obviously wants a row of moods you pick from, and the obvious drawing for a mood is a face. A row of happy, sad and angry faces on a Disabled people’s site is the emotion flashcard that autistic people spend their childhoods being drilled with. So each card says what it is for in a sentence about a situation you might actually be in, and you read the ones that sound like your week.
The quotations are set in type; only the margins are handwritten. The hand is for the keeper’s own asides. A passage set in a handwriting face is an access failure wearing atmosphere, so the tool refuses one.

The book

Open at the page it was left at. Each leaf carries the line, who wrote it, what it is for, a note in the margin from whoever copied it out, and — behind the tab — how it was checked and what got pasted in beside it.

I have no more made my book than my book has made me.

Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton, Essays, Book II, chapter XVIII. Read in Cotton's English of the Essays, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 3600.

Copied out for when you have been keeping one of these for years and cannot say what it is for

Montaigne kept a commonplace book and our glossary says so. This is the sentence that explains why anybody bothers.

Public domainchecked 2026-09-22

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-09-22 and read in its paragraph; the chapter was taken from the heading above it rather than from memory.

Pasted in beside it: A length of linen thread with a knot in it, pasted down and curling off the page.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, section 51, in Leaves of Grass. Read in the 1891-92 printing of Leaves of Grass, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 1322.

Copied out for when two true things about you are being treated as a contradiction to resolve

Printed inside brackets, like an aside. It is the loudest thing on the page and he said it under his breath.

Public domainchecked 2026-09-22

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-09-22. The brackets are Whitman's and are kept: the line is parenthetical in the printing, and quoting it without them tidies his punctuation into somebody else's.

Pasted in beside it: A blade of grass pressed flat, gone brown at the tip, with the crease where the book shut on it.
I'm nobody! Who are you?

Emily Dickinson, Poems, Second Series, part I (Life), poem I. Read in the 1891 Second Series edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 12242.

Copied out for when being nobody in particular is the best offer on the table

Her editors tidied her dashes and her capitals before they let her out. The room names the printing for exactly that reason.

Public domainchecked 2026-09-22

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-09-22, and the series was read off the title page above it. It is the SECOND series, not the first, which is what checking rather than remembering is for. Todd and Higginson edited these texts against the manuscripts, so this is their printing and later editions read differently.

Pasted in beside it: A broken wax seal, still stuck to the corner of a torn-off envelope flap.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, from the chapter Conclusion. Read in Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 205.

Copied out for when you are behind everybody else and it is being treated as a defect of character

Nobody marches anywhere in the real sentence, and there is no beat in it. He says perhaps, too.

Public domainchecked 2026-09-22

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-09-22 and read in its paragraph. This is one of the most misquoted sentences in English -- the version everybody knows has somebody marching to the beat of a different drummer, and Thoreau wrote neither the marching nor the beat. The room carries what is printed.

Pasted in beside it: Two lines of footprints across a margin, one set spaced wider than the other, going the same way.
Look within; within is the fountain of all good.

Marcus Aurelius, translated by Meric Casaubon, Meditations, Book VII. Read in Casaubon's 1634 English of the Meditations, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 2680.

Copied out for when the outside has run out of things to give you today

Written to himself, never meant for us, and it is the most quoted notebook anybody ever kept.

Public domainchecked 2026-09-22

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-09-22; the book number was taken from the heading above the line rather than from memory. Casaubon's translation is used because the well-known modern renderings of this line are somebody's copyright, and a translation has to be out of it too.

Pasted in beside it: A small spring drawn in section, water coming up through gravel into a cut basin.
Indeed, causality is an altogether queer matter.

Karen Barad, Nature's Queer Performativity. Read in Kvinder, Kon & Forskning nr. 1-2 (2012), 25-53.

Copied out for when cause and effect have stopped behaving and everyone is asking you why

A whole room on this street is built on this one line. It is still one line, and it still gets its citation.

Quoted and citedchecked 2026-09-22

Read off our own Hear Queer Here, which carries it with the full citation, on 2026-09-22. In copyright and quoted as one sentence with the citation attached, which is the only footing this room stands on for anything still owned.

Pasted in beside it: Two ripples spreading from separate points and crossing, drawn in fine parallel lines.
We are not broken objects. We are relations, all of us still becoming.

Helen Edgar, We Are Made of Relations: Quantum Physics and What It Means to Be Autistic. Read in More Realms.

Copied out for when somebody has just described you as a list of deficits

Helen's, and credited to her by name rather than folded into our we. She is a colleague, not a corpus.

Quoted and citedchecked 2026-09-22

Read off our own Hear Queer Here, which carries it with the link to her article, on 2026-09-22.

Pasted in beside it: Three loops of cord drawn passing through one another, with no end visible anywhere.
Burnout is a systems problem. Rest is repair, resistance, and wisdom.

Stimpunks Foundation, The Tenets of Stimpunks, tenet 8: Rest Is Not a Moral Failure. Read in stimpunks.org.

Copied out for when you have been told to rest in a tone that made it sound like an accusation

Ours, so there is nothing to clear and no excuse for getting the wording wrong either.

Ourschecked 2026-09-22

Read off our own tenets page on 2026-09-22, with the tenet it sits under.

Pasted in beside it: A cushion drawn from above with the dent still in it, and nobody in the chair.
Stories are data. Bodies remember what systems forget.

Stimpunks Foundation, The Tenets of Stimpunks, tenet 9: Lived Experience Is Legitimate Knowledge. Read in stimpunks.org.

Copied out for when you are asked for evidence and you are standing in the room being it

The sentence a lot of us needed in writing before a room full of people would take it.

Ourschecked 2026-09-22

Read off our own tenets page on 2026-09-22, with the tenet it sits under.

Pasted in beside it: A used ticket stub pasted at an angle, the printing on it worn away to nothing.
I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter XLIV, My Lord and Lady. Read in the Little, Brown and Company printing with Frank T. Merrill's illustrations, its title page carrying the copyrights of 1880 and 1896, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 37106. Sent in by Betsy.

Copied out for when you are still learning to do the thing you are already doing

Amy says it, newly married, in the same breath as offering to go home and find her husband's bootjack. Brave lines are mostly said in passing.

Public domainchecked 2026-10-14

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-10-14 and read in its paragraph, with the chapter taken from the heading above it. It was sent in with I am both times; the printing has I'm, and the room carries what is printed. Gutenberg's other Little Women, ebook 514, names no printing and disagrees with this one three lines above the sentence, which is why the card names this one.

Pasted in beside it: A paper boat folded out of a scrap of printed paper, pressed flat between the leaves so its folds show as creases.
I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, section 20, in Leaves of Grass. Read in the 1891-92 printing of Leaves of Grass, as transcribed in Project Gutenberg ebook 1322. Sent in by Betsy.

Copied out for when nobody has noticed, and you are deciding whether that matters

The line everybody keeps is the first one. The other two say it holds whether nobody notices or everybody does.

Public domainchecked 2026-10-14

Grepped out of the Gutenberg transcription on 2026-10-14, with the section number taken from the heading above it. It was sent in as its first line, ending in a full stop. Whitman ends that line in a comma and keeps going for two more, so the room carries the whole sentence, in its three lines.

Pasted in beside it: A sprig of lilac pressed flat, its small four-petalled flowers gone papery, and one fallen loose beside it.
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Simone de Beauvoir, translated by H. M. Parshley, The Second Sex, Part IV, The Formative Years, chapter I, Childhood. Read by Ryan Boren in H. M. Parshley's English, published by Jonathan Cape in London, page 273. Sent in by Betsy.

Copied out for when somebody is telling you what you were always going to be

It opens the chapter called Childhood, and the rest of the page is about how alike girls and boys are, in body and in mind, up to the age of twelve.

Quoted and citedchecked 2026-10-14

Read in the book by Ryan Boren on 2026-10-14, on page 273, where it is the first sentence of the chapter, and it came in exactly as printed. In copyright, and quoted as one sentence with Beauvoir and her translator both named. The title page gives no year, so the link is Open Library's record of Cape's 1953 London printing; whether this copy is that one or a later one was not read.

Pasted in beside it: A fern frond pressed while it was still uncurling, the tip a tight spiral and the rest of it already open.
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, chapter 20. Read by Ryan Boren in Faber and Faber's 1966 edition, from its third printing of 1971, as reissued in the Public Domain Core Collection, page 214 of the reissue. Sent in by Betsy.

Copied out for when you have come through something and need to hear that you are still here

It comes at a funeral, and the three words after it get a paragraph to themselves, which is how loud they are.

Quoted and citedchecked 2026-10-14

Read in the book by Ryan Boren on 2026-10-14, on page 214 of the Public Domain Core Collection's reissue, which says it was made from Faber and Faber's 1971 third printing of the 1966 edition, by way of Faded Page; the page number is the reissue's, not Faber's, and the chapter was read off the reissue's own page for chapter 20. It was sent in with a colon after heart. The printing ends the sentence there and sets I am, I am, I am as a paragraph of its own, so the leaf carries both, on two lines. The reissue is public domain in Canada, where it was made, and its own guide says it may not be elsewhere; Plath died in 1963 and is in copyright under this room's seventy years, so the line is quoted short and cited, and the link is Open Library's record of the Faber edition rather than the reissue.

Pasted in beside it: A snowdrop pressed flat, its white head still bowed on the stalk.

The attribution slip

Got one for the book? Fill this in and it writes you a tidy block of text to copy. Send it however you already talk to us — email, Discord, a text message. Nothing on this page is submitted anywhere. There is no form action, no endpoint and no request: the button copies to your clipboard and that is the whole of it.

You will not get it all. Send what you have and say what you are unsure of — “heard it in a lecture, never found the book” is a genuinely useful thing to write in the last box, and a great deal better than a guess that reads like a fact.

The spine of this is TASL — Title, Author, Source, Licence, which is Creative Commons’ own shorthand for crediting something you have reused. It is the right skeleton for a photograph, where the thing you are pointing at is one file at one address. A quotation needs three more, marked below: which printing, where you found it, and what it is for.

The quotation itself needed

Keep it short -- this room's own limit is 30 words, and the reason is on the page.

Who wrote it (Author) needed

The person, not the person who said it to you. If you do not know, say so here rather than guessing.

What it is from (Title) needed

The book, poem, essay, talk or post. A chapter or section number if you have one.

Which printing needed

The edition, year, publisher, issue -- whatever pins down WHICH version of the text this is. Texts differ between printings and this is the field that makes an entry checkable.

A link to it (Source)

A link to the work itself where there is one. Not a quotation site.

Its terms (Licence)

Where you found it

The book you were reading, the person who told you, the page you saw it on. This is the field that catches a misquotation, because most of them are copied in good faith off something that was already wrong.

What it is for

A situation somebody might be in, in your own words. Not a mood to pick off a list.

Scripts are off, so there is no clipboard button. That is fine — the slip is only a shape for a message. Copy the field names above into an email in this order and fill them in: the quotation, who wrote it, what it is from, which printing, a link, its terms, where you found it, and what it is for. That is exactly what the button would have written out for you.

Whose words these are

Not ours, mostly, and that is the point of the room. Helen Edgar’s line is hers and is credited to her by name rather than folded into our “we”. Karen Barad’s comes with its citation, as it does in the room built on it. The public domain lines were read out of the transcriptions each card names, and Meric Casaubon is credited for the Meditations because a translation is a work somebody made and is in copyright on its own clock. Two of them are ours, off our own tenets. Betsy was the first to send lines in, and a leaf somebody sent says who on its citation.

Our glossary quotes Seneca on learning sayings so well that words become works. It is not in here: the wording we published is a modern translation we cannot name, and the public domain one does not read that way. Better a gap somebody has checked than a line nobody can place.

Everything is collected in the liner notes.

HOW LOUD DO YOU WANT IT?

Starts wherever your device says. Nothing is hidden at Gentle — every word on this page is on it at every setting. MAX GLITTER lets the leaves lie at the angle they were pasted at.

Job marker — a steel nib laid down beside the book

You have found a job marker. The Adventurer’s Guild is a shopfront on the street, and it posts jobs that send you round these rooms. Take the code below to its board and that job is done. Nothing here is scored, nothing expires, and one is a perfectly good number of jobs to do.

The job: Which printing it was

Before the code: The Emily Dickinson line in that book is not in the series everybody assumes. Which series is it in? One word.

Hint 1

It is not on the card with the quotation on it. It is in the room's list of what the book will and will not do.

Hint 2

The rule is the one about naming the printing rather than the title, and the room calls this entry its proof.

Last hint

The room says it is in the second series, not the first.

Give me the answer

The answer is The second. It is in the Second Series of 1891, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, not the first. That is the whole argument of the room in one entry: a title is not a source, these texts differ between printings, and the only thing that told anybody which one it was was going and reading the title page above the poem instead of remembering. Todd and Higginson edited Dickinson's punctuation before they let her out, so the printing you name decides the words you are quoting.

Taking the answer is a real way through this, not a lesser one. Nothing is watching and nothing is written down.

Quest code: STEELNIB

Hand it in at the Adventurer’s Guild →