What was on the notepad on August 5 last year

"People who since childhood have been accustomed to the rectilinear are inclined, when they reach middle age, to prefer the serpentine." —Harold Nicolson, "Another Road to Xanadu" (review of Hugh Honour's Chinoiserie), The Observer, Sun Dec 10, 1961

"It is a book to give and to keep." —Ibid.

"We shall all die symmetrically." —Mme de Maintenon

"Things grow, things die, is it." —Stanley Crawford

"I turned it over in my mind like a living Chinese finger trap." —Mountain Goats

"And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd." —Postal Service