Writer Quotes by Joan Didion

Writers are always selling somebody out.

— Joan Didion

Writers are only rarely likable.

— Joan Didion

I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.

— Joan Didion

I don't know what I think until I write it down.

— Joan Didion

I am always writing to myself.

— Joan Didion

“I write to know what I think.”

— Joan Didion

You can throw a novel into focus with one overheard line.

— Joan Didion

Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting.

— Joan Didion

I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people.

— Joan Didion

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.

— Joan Didion

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it

— Joan Didion

It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.

— Joan Didion

What you're normally doing as a writer is trying to find the narrative.

— Joan Didion

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

— Joan Didion

I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.

— Joan Didion

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

— Joan Didion

Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page…

— Joan Didion

I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion…

— Joan Didion

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than myself.…

— Joan Didion

My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's…

— Joan Didion

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

I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the…

— Joan Didion

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just…

— Joan Didion

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally,…

— Joan Didion

When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish…

— Joan Didion

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

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel,…

— Joan Didion

There is always a point in the writing of a piece when I sit in a room literally papered with false starts…

— Joan Didion

I just read everything I could get my hands on. I taught myself to read or my mother taught me. Who knows…

— Joan Didion

Hemingway was really early. I probably started reading him when I was just eleven or twelve. There was just something magnetic to…

— Joan Didion

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to…

— Joan Didion

“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

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

— Joan Didion

There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they're evading writing.

— Joan Didion

If you aren't aware of the reader, you're working in a vacuum.

— Joan Didion

Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.

— Joan Didion

The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities.

— Joan Didion

Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write.

— Joan Didion

The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.

— Joan Didion

I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.

— Joan Didion