It was His Notebook

Balzac, a well-known writer, said to a woman, “If you show me a boy’s notebook, I shall tell you what a man he will be.”

So one day the woman brought him a notebook, opened it and said, “What can you tell me about the boy who wrote this?”

Balzac looked at the notebook and answered, “The boy is very lazy. If his parents don’t look after him, he will be a bad man.”

“Oh,” said the woman, “but this is your notebook. You wrote in it when you were a boy.”