You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be… — 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
Although a novel takes place in the larger world, there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal - even if… — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone 'oppressed' to beat them: every revolutionist is presumed to… — 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
The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
There's a general impulse to distract the grieving person - as if you could. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found… — 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 Image
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 Image
California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension. — 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 much of… — 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
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 Image
I'm not very interested in people. I recognize it in myself - there is a basic indifference toward people. — Joan Didion Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
