"Another reason why diaries keep on being published on the Internet is that, by communicating about their inner lives, diarists are not merely engaging in self-expression, but are actually trying to better appropriate some elements of their own lives by theatricalizing them through words and pictures. Although self-dramatization may sound like another impediment to total openness, it actually helps externalize inner processes and display them to others in the hope that they will respond, so that they can be internalized anew, in modified form. This externalization of one's intimate life is what Jaques Lacan, followed by many others, called 'extimacy'. The drive toward self-revelation is thus one of the means through which individuals attempt to gain better access to their inner life."
- The Mirror and the Veil af Viviane Serfaty