Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Details are our business as writers. Your heart leaps when you see a detail that can go somewhere — 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
I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at. What I see and what I fear. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Somehow writing has always seemed to me to have an element of performance. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning… — 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… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more… — 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
It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact… — 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
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors.… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“This “I” was the voice of no author in my house. This “I” was someone who not only knew why Charlotte went… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored.… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The impulse for much writing is homesickness. You are trying to get back home, and in your writing you are invoking that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
People tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
You think you have some stable talent which will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don't read them in one sitting. You… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“I began to make notes. I began to write down everything I saw and heard and remembered and imagined. I began to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I use an IBM Thinkpad. I just use it like a typewriter, but when I started using it in 1987, I thought… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Before I started working on a computer, writing a piece would be like making something up every day, taking the material and… — 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
![“My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.” quote by Joan Didion](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/008/joan-didion-497_age_my-first-notebook-was-a-big-five-tablet_2074889.jpg)
