Joan Didion Quotes

American - Author Born: December 5, 1934

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

Life, Dinner, Down, Life Changes, You

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

Worth, Self-Respect, Price, Question

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

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

Life, Life Changes, Changes, Ordinary

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

Power, Respect, Great, Free, Back, Give

We imagine things - that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. We have no choice, so we do it. Joan Didion

Survive, Choice, Things, Imagine, Fact

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

Swimming, Pool, Always, Never, Wanted

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

Broken, Lost, Want, Got, Wasted, Longer

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

Walk, You, Places, Away, Pick

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

Sky, Doing, Late, Brilliant, West Coast

Top 10
Joan Didion
Quotes

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

Down, You, Go, Texture, Original, Like

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

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

Decision, You, Right, Right Decision

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

Thought, Never Forget, Forget, Never

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

Writing, Research, Down, You, Sculpture

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

Service, Great, Ideas, Always, Mirrors

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

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, California, Leaving, Everything

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, Important, True

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

Christmas, People, Me, California, Never

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, Narrative, Line

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself. Joan Didion

Love, Romantic, Power, Money, City, New

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers. Joan Didion

Life, Children, Fancy, Own, Order, Our

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before? Joan Didion

Life, Time, Memory, Night, Choices, Free

Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream. Joan Didion

Good, Walk, Listening, Dream, You, Want

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream. Joan Didion

Listening, Dream, Always, Writer, Reader

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