“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
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
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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
“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
“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 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
“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
“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
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
“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
“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
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
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
“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
“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
“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
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
