Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at. What I see and what I fear. — 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
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
“I began to make notes. I began to write down everything I saw and heard and remembered and imagined. I began to… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself.… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would… — 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
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
“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How… — 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
“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How… — 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
