I wanted to be an oceanographer, actually. It's a way of going underwater. I've always been interested in how deep it was,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most… — 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
In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
All of these things we do without children, and suddenly we don't do them anymore, and it comes home to us in… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally,… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past ... Here is the last stop for… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally,… — 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… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel,… — 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
...quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor,… — 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
I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I did consider marriage and motherhood extreme and doomed commitments. Not out of any experience of them as such, but it was… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I closed the box and put it in a closet. There is no real way to deal with everything we lose. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning… — 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
