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JOAN DIDION

Portrait of Joan Didion from the Joan Didion archive.

JOAN DIDION
QUOTES

Line by line, sentence by sentence, we are mesmerized by her words.

Read, download, and share quotations from Joan Didion’s essays, novels, and interviews.

JOAN DIDION BOOKS

Joan Didion Let Me Tell You What I Mean Book Cover

Joan Didion Vintage Didion Book Cover

Joan Didion South and West Book Cover

Joan Didion We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live Book Cover

Joan Didion Political Fictions Book Cover

Joan Didion The White Album Book Cover

Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem Book Cover

Joan Didion After Henry Book Cover

Joan Didion Blue Nights Book Cover

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion Where I was From

Joan Didion Salvador Book Cover

Joan Didion Miami Book Cover

Joan Didion Run River Book Cover

Joan Didion The Last Thing He Wanted Book Cover

Joan Didion A Book of Common Prayer Book Cover

Joan Didion Play It As It Lays

Joan Didion Democracy Book Cover

Cover of Joan Didion’s Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11

In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act.

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

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.

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

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect.

We were just crazy kids” they say without regret, and look to the future. The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past.

I wanted not a window on the world but the world itself. I wanted everything in the picture.