Ulysses S. Grant, who left office in 1877, said,
“The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat pocket or the hands of a clerk…more careful than myself.”
Ronald G. Shafer, Presidential papers have long been turning up in unexpected places, Wash. Post (Feb. 4, 2023)
"But I'm sure you keep records."
"Oh yes, records, of course." The man moved to a computer,hit some keys. "Here we go." A printer made some machine sounds, very unpleasant to my ears. The man handed Bernie a sheet of paper. Paper was very important to human beings: They spent a lot of their time messing around with it. The appeal was lost on me.Spencer Quinn, Dog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery (New York: Atria, 2009), p. 215. (Chet, the narrator, is a dog, by the way.)
The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks because they haven’t yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head.Malcolm Gladwell, "The Social Life of Paper," The New Yorker, March 25, 2002, at 92, 93.
There are days on which Julia does not open letters. She is overcome, as I understand it, by a sort of superstitious dread, in which she is persuaded that letters bode her no good: they will be from the Gas Board, and demand money; or from the Inland Revenue, and demand accounts; or from some much valued friend, and demand an answer. If a letter arrives on such a day as this, she does not open it but puts it carefully away, to be dealt with when she feels stronger. After that, I had always supposed, it is never seen again.Sarah Caudwell, The Shortest Way to Hades (New York: Dell, 1995), p. 53. (copyright 1984)
