Joan Didion Quotes


To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self, an impossible claim that one should be at once Rose Bowl princess, medieval scholar, Saint Joan, Milly Theale, Temple Drake, Eleanor of Aquitaine, one Joan Didion Envy 134
Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price. Joan Didion Anything 98
I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage. Joan Didion Uncategorized 95
My own fantasies of what life would be like at 24 tended to the more spectacular. Joan Didion Uncategorized 92
Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power. Joan Didion Property 92
The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers. Joan Didion Science 90
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. Joan Didion Changes 86
Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. Joan Didion Changes 85
I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe. Joan Didion Uncategorized 81
Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Joan Didion Disillusionment 78
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream. Joan Didion Dream 74
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. Joan Didion Memory 74
Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone. Joan Didion Alone 70
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Joan Didion Reading 69
Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up. Joan Didion Business 64
Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting. Joan Didion Aim 63
A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye. Joan Didion Water 62
My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. Joan Didion Uncategorized 61
...the child trying not to appear as a child of the strenuousness with which she tried to present the face of a convincing adult. Joan Didion Acting 56
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. Joan Didion Power 55
Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins. Joan Didion Analysis 55
Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service. Joan Didion Travel 52
Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? Joan Didion dreams 51
Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing. Joan Didion Course 50
Writers are always selling somebody out. Joan Didion Authors 46
It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set – which was kind of shallow in my case anyway – had begun to fade. Joan Didion Uncategorized 44
Memories are what you no longer want to remember. Joan Didion Uncategorized 43
Style is character. Joan Didion Uncategorized 41
Another thing I need to do when Im near the end of the book is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book doesnt leave you when youre asleep right next to it. Joan Didion Reading 41
Nothing is critic-proof. Joan Didion Uncategorized 40
...nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows the void the very opposite of meaning the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself. Joan Didion Grief 40
Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff. Joan Didion Uncategorized 40
It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive. Joan Didion Grief 38
Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces. Joan Didion Uncategorized 37
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. Joan Didion Uncategorized 37
I could talk more directly in a nonfiction voice than I could in fiction. Joan Didion Uncategorized 36
I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story. Joan Didion Talent 36
I lead a very conventional life. Joan Didion Uncategorized 36
A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image. Joan Didion Travel 35
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Joan Didion Stories 35
We imagined we knew everything the other thought even when we did not necessarily want to know it but in fact I have come to see we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know. Joan Didion Relationships 34
The ability to think for ones self depends upon ones mastery of the language. Joan Didion Language 34
In Brentwood we had a big safe-deposit box to put manuscripts in if we left town during fire season. It was such a big box that we never bothered to clean it out. Joan Didion Big 34
Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself. I always failed. I would freeze up. Joan Didion Uncategorized 33
What these men represented was not The West but what was for this century a relatively new kind of monied class in America a group devoid of social responsibilities because their ties to any one place had been so attenuated. Joan Didion Economics 32
You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that. Joan Didion Change 32
Call me the author. Joan Didion Author 31
Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power. Joan Didion Power 31
I hadn't thought that I was generally a pack rat, but it turns out I am. Joan Didion Uncategorized 27
I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die. Joan Didion Uncategorized 23

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