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Psychology Quotes by Joan Didion

11 Psychology quotes by Joan Didion

All Psychology quotes Joan Didion’s page

Joan Didion’s voice often lingers on the edges of experience, and these eleven snippets turn that focus toward the inner workings of the mind. They’re concise, yet each line captures a nuanced observation that can spark a quiet moment of self‑examination.

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Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way,…

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“I used to tell John my dreams, not to understand them but to get rid of them, clear my mind for the…

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“There was silence. Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind she…

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In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see…

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The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture…

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California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the…

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Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is…

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This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingly to illness, to…

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I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them…

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“All I knew was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer.…

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“Self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was…

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More by Joan Didion

To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters…

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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…

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Style is character.

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California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.

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“I went because I was interested in the alchemy of issues.”

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“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of…

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I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted.

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My mother 'gave teas' the way other mothers breathed. Her own mother 'gave teas.' All of their friends 'gave teas,' each involving butter cookies…

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I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people.

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“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…

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“Research to date has shown that, like many other stressors, grief frequently leads to changes in the endocrine, immune, autonomic nervous, and cardiovascular systems;…

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“By the end of the week she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air began about the exact point in…

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“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…

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I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent…

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To those of us who remained committed mainly to the exploration of moral distinctions and ambiguities, the feminist analysis may have seemed a particularly…

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