Most writers take some kind of notes in some form, but Price, by the time he begins to work on A Long and Happy Life , has carried the process to a very extreme level. We'll see more of that when we talk about that novel and the notes that produced it. There's also a real risk that all the cogitation the notebooks record might just strangle the story itself as it tries to get born.
Price is certainly aware of the risk in hindsight.
It's not at all a bad idea to keep a bag full of stuff like this. Each shard of anecdote or speech, as you insert them between the folds of your brain, may work like the grain of sand in the oyster. Not all writers write it all down though, and few of them write as much of it down as Price, who made this entire mental process take place on paper. No problem with that if it works for you. But it would be insane to tell yourself you have to do all this stuff on paper.