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
You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs. Self-respect is something… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Sometimes I'll be fifty, sixty pages into something and I'll still be calling a character "X." I don't have a very clear… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to… — 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
I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“Of course we would all like to "believe" in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose… — 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 Image
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 Image
California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“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 Image
I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
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 Image
I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
