The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information was control.” — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I realized that for the time being I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world.” — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they're evading writing. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John’s eyes.… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found… — 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
“...nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“The objects for which there is no satisfactory resolution… In theory, these mementos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“In theory these mementos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach... I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“We all know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a time when we must relinquish the dead, let them… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I find many mass cards from the funerals of people whose faces I no longer remember. In theory these mementos serve to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Yes, but another writer I read in high school who just knocked me out was Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Actually, when John died, for the first time I thought - for the first time I realized how old I was, because… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn’t want to be a writer. I wanted to… — 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
“I offer you a second way of approaching the moment where everything in your life just stops, this one from the actor… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I liked it all, but most of all I liked the fact that although the play was entirely focused on Quintana there… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Flying to Monterey I had a sharp apprehension of the many times before when I had, like Lincoln Steffens, "come back," flown… — 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
“The French called this time of day 'l'heure bleue.' To the English it was 'the gloaming.' The very word 'gloaming' reverberates, echoes… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“By the end of the week she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air began about the exact… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
In theory momentos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Throw yourself into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progress… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I bought new strings of colored lights. This served as a profession of faith in the future. I take the opportunity for… — 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
