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
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
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
In fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I myself have always found that if I examine something, it's less scary. I grew up in the West, and we always… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I didn’t like it [computer] when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is… — 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
As it happened, I didn't grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
When you write, you're always revealing a difficult part of yourself. It may not be a part of yourself that looks as… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I recognize a lot of the things I'm going through. Like, I lose my temper a lot and I become unhinged and… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Becoming a parent is actually terrifying. A lot of people have that feeling about their dogs. And if you're the kind of… — 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
I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged. — 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