It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That academic mind-set… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
In Brentwood we had a big safe-deposit box to put manuscripts in if we left town during fire season. It was such… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I never had faith that the answers to human problems lay in anything that could be called political. I thought the answers,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
A lot of the stories I was brought up on had to do with extreme actions - leaving everything behind, crossing the… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant… — 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
The clothes chosen for me as a child had a strong element of the Pre-Raphaelite, muted greens and ivories, dusty rose, what… — 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
