You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part. — 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
I always want everything read in one sitting. If they can't read it in one sitting, you're going to lose the rhythm… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don't read them in one sitting. You… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I… — 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
In terms of work, I never felt that I've done it right. I always want to have done it differently, to have… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture… — 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
Above all, she is the girl who 'feels' things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolescence, the girl… — 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
Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake...… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times… — 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 start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you're alone with yourself and your mantra… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
prepare a little hot tea or broth and it should be brought to them . . . without their being asked if… — 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
Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to… — 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
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
California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension. — Joan Didion Copy Share
“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
I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. — Joan Didion Copy Share
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
I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people. — Joan Didion Copy Share
“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
“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
“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
“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… — Joan Didion Copy Share
I read so ravenously that I would read through whole categories. I was crazy about reading biographies. [...] I think biographies are very urgent… — Joan Didion Copy Share
To those of us who remained committed mainly to the exploration of moral distinctions and ambiguities, the feminist analysis may have seemed a particularly… — Joan Didion Copy Share
![“I didn’t like it [computer] when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is a kind of different process. You’ve got research, you’ve got your notes, You can block out what you want to work on for the next 10 pages and put it in another file, and then you can kind…” quote by Joan Didion](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/4d9/joan-didion-497_block_i-didn-t-like-it-computer-when-i-first-b_1018860.jpg)
