Joan Didion Quotes

American - Author Born: December 5, 1934

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power. Joan Didion

Power, Play, Know, Grammar, Piano, Ear

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing. Joan Didion

Research, Writing, You, Down, Matter, Go

Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff. Joan Didion

Sky, Doing, Late, Brilliant, West, Stuff

I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. Joan Didion

Broken, Lost, Want, Wasted, Got, Longer

Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service. Joan Didion

Great, Service, Ideas, Mirrors, Always

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. Joan Didion

Thought, Never Forget, Forget, Never

It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento. Joan Didion

People, Me, Never, California, Talk, Who

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Joan Didion

Fear, Thinking, Looking, Find, Want, See

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel. Joan Didion

Strength, Physical, Sure, Novel

Memories are what you no longer want to remember. Joan Didion

Memories, You, Remember, Want, Longer

Top 10
Joan Didion
Quotes

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something... but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, that is when we join the fashionable madmen. Joan Didion

Thinking, Moral, Start, Want, Something

Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. Joan Didion

Life, Dinner, You, Down, Know, Fast

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs. Joan Didion

Life, Responsibility, Self-Respect, Own

Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price. Joan Didion

Self-Respect, Price, Worth, Question

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one. Joan Didion

Swimming, Pool, Never, Always, Wanted

The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control. Joan Didion

Water, People, Control, True, Important

One of the things that happens to people in grief is they secretly think they're crazy, because they realize they are thinking things that don't make sense. Joan Didion

Grief, People, Crazy, Thinking, Think

You aren't sure if you're making the right decision - about anything, ever. Joan Didion

Decision, You, Right, Anything, Sure

The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion real live here in only the most temporary way. Joan Didion

Life, Live, Believe, Illusion, Way, Real

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. Joan Didion

Great, Power, Respect, Free, Back, Give

Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing. Joan Didion

You, Down, Go, Texture, Like, Original

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. Joan Didion

Life, Life Changes, Ordinary, Changes

To believe in 'the greater good' is to operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension. Joan Didion

Good, Believe, Ethical, Greater Good

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Joan Didion

Live, Experience, Ideas, Line, Narrative

You have to pick the places you don't walk away from. Joan Didion

Walk, You, Places, Away, Pick

A lot of the stories I was brought up on had to do with extreme actions - leaving everything behind, crossing the trackless wastes, and in those stories the people who stayed behind and had their settled ways - those people were not the people who got the prize. The prize was California. Joan Didion

People, Leaving, California, Up, Got

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