“ That no one dies of migraine seems to someone deep in an attack as an ambiguous blessing. ” — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Can you evade the dying of the brightness? Or do you evade only its warning? Where are you left if you miss… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone. The connections that made up their life--both the deep connections and the… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I learned early to keep death in my line of sight, keep it under surveillance, keep it on cleared ground and away… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“pupils were fixed in the position of wide black dilatation that signifies brain death, and obviously would never respond to light again.” — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Research to date has shown that, like many other stressors, grief frequently leads to changes in the endocrine, immune, autonomic nervous, and… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Most death now happens in hospitals. It's been medicalized. It happens away from where we deal with it directly. And that's a… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“The death of a parent, he wrote, 'despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
What does it cost to lose those weeks, that light, the very nights in the year preferred over all others? Can you… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Philippe Ariès, in The Hour of Our Death, points out that the essential characteristic of death as it appears in the Chanson… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I've come to a much more controlled idea about death and loss, but I don't think it's possible to come to that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“The death of a parent, he wrote, 'Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“What I felt in each instance was sadness, loneliness (the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age), regret for time gone… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I am dropping my keys on the table inside the door before I fully remember. There is no one to hear this… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Dolphins, I learned from J. Worden of the Harvard Child Bereavement Study at Massachusetts General Hospital, had been observed refusing to eat… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Everybody who undergoes a death and finds themselves grieving is obsessed with — or maybe overly focused on — the idea that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
When you lose someone, a whole lot of perfectly normal circumstances suddenly take on different meaning. You see it in a different… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters… — Joan Didion Copy Share
I work every day. Sometimes I don't accomplish anything every day, but if I don't work every day, I get depressed and get afraid… — Joan Didion Copy Share
California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension. — Joan Didion Copy Share
“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of… — Joan Didion Copy Share
I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. — Joan Didion Copy Share
My mother 'gave teas' the way other mothers breathed. Her own mother 'gave teas.' All of their friends 'gave teas,' each involving butter cookies… — Joan Didion Copy Share
I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people. — Joan Didion Copy Share
“Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a point when choice was any more than sum… — Joan Didion Copy Share
“Research to date has shown that, like many other stressors, grief frequently leads to changes in the endocrine, immune, autonomic nervous, and cardiovascular systems;… — Joan Didion Copy Share
“By the end of the week she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air began about the exact point in… — Joan Didion Copy Share
“I just can't see the upside in this," I heard myself say by way of explanation. Later he said that if John had been… — Joan Didion Copy Share
I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent… — Joan Didion Copy Share
To those of us who remained committed mainly to the exploration of moral distinctions and ambiguities, the feminist analysis may have seemed a particularly… — Joan Didion Copy Share
![“Despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, [the death of a parent] dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and may cut free memories and feelings that we thought had gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a…” quote by Joan Didion](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/f93/joan-didion-497_age_despite-our-preparation-indeed-despite-o_1987477.jpg)
