To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self, an impossible claim that one should be… — 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
I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We are repeatedly left, in other words, with no further focus than ourselves, a source from which self-pity naturally flows. Each time… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them… — joan didion Copy Share Image
If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is… — 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
