Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
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 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 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 Copy Share Image
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 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
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 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
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
“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
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
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 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
I use an IBM Thinkpad. I just use it like a typewriter, but when I started using it in 1987, I thought… — 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
Before I started working on a computer, writing a piece would be like making something up every day, taking the material and… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors.… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
The impulse for much writing is homesickness. You are trying to get back home, and in your writing you are invoking that… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even… — 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
People tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing… — 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
Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery… — 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
