Joan Didion quote: "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."

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it fro...
JOAN DIDION

I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die.
JOAN DIDION

Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting ...
JOAN DIDION

What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is go...
JOAN DIDION

Writers are always selling somebody out.
JOAN DIDION

Jesus
JOAN DIDION

I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, ...
JOAN DIDION

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.
JOAN DIDION

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not th...
JOAN DIDION

We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them att...
JOAN DIDION

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have ev...
JOAN DIDION

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soo...
JOAN DIDION

Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europ...
JOAN DIDION

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the u...
JOAN DIDION

Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended a...
JOAN DIDION

We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we share...
JOAN DIDION

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self, an impossible claim that ...
JOAN DIDION

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.
JOAN DIDION

There is in Hollywood, as in all cultures in which gambling is the central activity, a lowered sexua...
JOAN DIDION

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect sp...
JOAN DIDION

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. W...
JOAN DIDION

Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from whi...
JOAN DIDION

I think nobody owns the land until their dead are in it.
JOAN DIDION

I went on a book tour immediately after 9/11. I was due to leave the following Wednesday, so I just ...
JOAN DIDION

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate...
JOAN DIDION

It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism ...
JOAN DIDION

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.
JOAN DIDION

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

My mother 'gave teas' the way other mothers breathed. Her own mother 'gave teas.' Al...
JOAN DIDION

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in yo...
JOAN DIDION

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.
JOAN DIDION

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only questio...
JOAN DIDION

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find ...
JOAN DIDION

My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, an...
JOAN DIDION

When I was in fact a child, six and seven and eight years old, I was utterly baffled by the enthusia...
JOAN DIDION

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something... but that it is a moral...
JOAN DIDION

To those of us who remained committed mainly to the exploration of moral distinctions and ambiguitie...
JOAN DIDION

The clothes chosen for me as a child had a strong element of the Pre-Raphaelite, muted greens and iv...
JOAN DIDION

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not ...
JOAN DIDION

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth... is potentially to have everything...
JOAN DIDION

Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies t...
JOAN DIDION

Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which s...
JOAN DIDION

It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between wha...
JOAN DIDION

The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power fo...
JOAN DIDION

California: The west coast of Iowa.
JOAN DIDION

I was raised an Episcopalian. And I did not and I don't believe that anyone is looking out for m...
JOAN DIDION

I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good ...
JOAN DIDION

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half...
JOAN DIDION

Once in a while, when I first started to write pieces, I would try to write to a reader other than m...
JOAN DIDION

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

I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation t...
JOAN DIDION

I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a sou...
JOAN DIDION

A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.
JOAN DIDION

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not sh...
JOAN DIDION

Janis Joplin is singing with Big Brother in the Panhandle and almost everybody is high and it is a p...
JOAN DIDION

Everything's going along as usual and then all shit breaks loose.
JOAN DIDION

It took me a couple of years after I got out of Berkeley before I dared to start writing. That acade...
JOAN DIDION

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have...
JOAN DIDION

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I...
JOAN DIDION

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someon...
JOAN DIDION

Hemingway was really early. I probably started reading him when I was just eleven or twelve. There w...
JOAN DIDION

In Brentwood we had a big safe-deposit box to put manuscripts in if we left town during fire season....
JOAN DIDION

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice...
JOAN DIDION

I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to...
JOAN DIDION

Yes, but another writer I read in high school who just knocked me out was Theodore Dreiser. I read A...
JOAN DIDION

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.
JOAN DIDION

That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out
JOAN DIDION

hand that on parting squeezes your shoulder, salutes the small of your back.
JOAN DIDION

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget
JOAN DIDION

That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out
JOAN DIDION

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have ev...
JOAN DIDION

I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tel...
JOAN DIDION

[Outside, a ceiling of pearly gray clouds coalesced over Manhattan, and the apartment had grown dark...
JOAN DIDION

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.
JOAN DIDION

We tell ourselves stories,
JOAN DIDION

There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible.
JOAN DIDION

[In her devastating new book,] The Year of Magical Thinking, ... cut loose any fixed idea I had ever...
JOAN DIDION

This one is really fantastic, ... It's not about grieving. It's about what happens when people die.
JOAN DIDION

I'm not sure I would have anyway, ... If I had been writing it at the time she died, that would have...
JOAN DIDION

It's always something minor. Some bit of information. Some interesting development. I think it hits ...
JOAN DIDION

A young woman with long hair and a short white halter dress walks through the casino at the Riviera ...
JOAN DIDION

We tell ourselves stories in order to live,
JOAN DIDION

Life changes fast, ... Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it e...
JOAN DIDION

There's hardly anything I can say about this except thank you,
JOAN DIDION

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, sing...
JOAN DIDION

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was...
JOAN DIDION

We were that generation called ''silent,'' but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we s...
JOAN DIDION

I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the ma...
JOAN DIDION

That no one dies of migraine seems to someone deep in an attack as an ambiguous blessing.
JOAN DIDION

I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.
JOAN DIDION

And except on a certain kind of winter evening—six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and ...
JOAN DIDION

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not sh...
JOAN DIDION

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
JOAN DIDION

I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.
JOAN DIDION

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not sh...
JOAN DIDION

I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lightin...
JOAN DIDION

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self
JOAN DIDION

I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted.
JOAN DIDION

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing....
JOAN DIDION

I couldn't give away my husband's shoes. I could give away other things, but the shoes - I d...
JOAN DIDION

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

The Year of Magical Thinking,
JOAN DIDION

Call me the author.
JOAN DIDION

I am sort of religious. But I don't believe in a personal God, ... I believe in geology. You can't b...
JOAN DIDION

I never had to finish sentences because he would finish them for me, ... I never got why. What was g...
JOAN DIDION

The shock of it was that this time, she had a lot of strength, ... Her husband and I assumed she'd o...
JOAN DIDION

Western Attitudes Toward Death.
JOAN DIDION

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?
JOAN DIDION

That's something we have to feel out. It occurred to me to begin with, as a way of taking it a step ...
JOAN DIDION

I think nobody owns the land until their dead are in it
JOAN DIDION

You can throw a novel into focus with one overheard line.
JOAN DIDION

Why do we like these stories so? Why do we tell them over and over? Why have we made a folk hero of ...
JOAN DIDION

They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words - words are for "typ...
JOAN DIDION

Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach... I could make promises to myself and to other...
JOAN DIDION

But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human il...
JOAN DIDION

All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom w...
JOAN DIDION

Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price ...
JOAN DIDION

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tri...
JOAN DIDION

I could tell you that I came back because I had promises to keep, but maybe it was because nobody as...
JOAN DIDION

It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figur...
JOAN DIDION

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find ...
JOAN DIDION

See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of w...
JOAN DIDION

Of course we would all like to "believe" in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public ...
JOAN DIDION

It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happ...
JOAN DIDION

Above all, she is the girl who 'feels' things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolesce...
JOAN DIDION

It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind o...
JOAN DIDION

…quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I mean tha...
JOAN DIDION

It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often ...
JOAN DIDION

It is the phenomenon somethings called "alienation from self." In its advanced stages, we no longer ...
JOAN DIDION

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betr...
JOAN DIDION

I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fil...
JOAN DIDION

[O]ne of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction ...
JOAN DIDION

People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was o...
JOAN DIDION

...quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean...
JOAN DIDION

...I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we fi...
JOAN DIDION

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find ...
JOAN DIDION

I have a theatrical temperament. I'm not interested in the middle road - maybe because everyone&...
JOAN DIDION

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all...
JOAN DIDION

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.
JOAN DIDION

A lot of the stories I was brought up on had to do with extreme actions - leaving everything behind,...
JOAN DIDION

Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.
JOAN DIDION

Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff.
JOAN DIDION

I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.
JOAN DIDION

I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and sometimes it was, but there were odd things go...
JOAN DIDION

Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.
JOAN DIDION

You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the s...
JOAN DIDION

I never had faith that the answers to human problems lay in anything that could be called political....
JOAN DIDION

A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.
JOAN DIDION

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

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.
JOAN DIDION

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respec...
JOAN DIDION

It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentr...
JOAN DIDION

This book is called "Blue Nights" because at the time I began it I found my mind turning increasingl...
JOAN DIDION

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line u...
JOAN DIDION

I wanted to get the tears out of the way so I could act sensibly.
JOAN DIDION

I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.
JOAN DIDION

My mother loved entertaining, and I've followed suit, so we have big celebrations for New Year, ...
JOAN RIVERS

When you look at the world, the world isn't just one palette. It's a beautiful rainbow, and ...
JOAN SMALLS

I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
JOAN MIRO

I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.
JOAN RIVERS

Forty for you, sixty for me. And equal partners we will be.
JOAN RIVERS

Being Jewish has always been important to me. I now have 6M tattooed on the inside of my left arm. I...
JOAN RIVERS

I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery.
JOAN RIVERS

I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, 'Get the hell off my property...
JOAN RIVERS

I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.
JOAN RIVERS

I have no methods; all I do is accept people as they are.
JOAN RIVERS

Is Elizabeth Taylor fat? Her favorite food is seconds.
JOAN RIVERS

I'm always shocked when I get an invitation. People are always shocked when they see me at a par...
JOAN RIVERS

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God's gift, that's why we call it the ...
JOAN RIVERS

I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.
JOAN RIVERS

Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It's all funny. Next. Everyone gets so upset about the w...
JOAN RIVERS

I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That...
JOAN RIVERS

Fashion is part of our culture, and it's about more than just a pretty dress.
JOAN SMALLS

I was not an attractive child. When I didn't use my Girl Scouts uniform as a uniform, I used it ...
JOAN RIVERS

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death inte...
JOAN BAEZ

We used to wash our hair in buckets and survive on toasted sandwiches, chocolates and soup.
JOAN GREENWOOD

I left my family, and I left my brother and sister, and I went and lived my dream. I saw everybody, ...
JOAN JETT

When I came back to it, we amicably separated from Warner Bros. I just picked up where I left off, t...
JOAN JETT

Bulgaria is fascinating. Because it had been a Communist country until the mid-80s, so it had just r...
JOAN CUSACK

I'm a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, w...
JOAN COLLINS

I love getting back to Wivenhoe. I get out of my wig, bustle and costume in three minutes flat at th...
JOAN HICKSON

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try to give their best qualiti...
JOAN BAEZ

What is the biggest public forum in the United States? We were told it's the Super Bowl. The ad ...
JOAN BLADES

Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.
JOAN LARSEN

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organiz...
JOAN BAEZ

When I finish dressing before a night out and have put on all the accessories, I usually look at mys...
JOAN COLLINS

I used to go over to Gene Kelly's house and play volleyball, and Paul Newman and Marlon Brando w...
JOAN COLLINS

Influence: What you think you have until you try to use it.
JOAN WELSH

Thank God we're living in a country where the sky's the limit, the stores are open late and you can ...
JOAN RIVERS

Vital lives are about action. You can't feel warmth unless you create it, can't feel delight until y...
JOAN ERICKSON

Roache's statement after his acquittal was dignified but his supporters were angry. They demanded to...
JOAN SMITH

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live wi...
JOAN POWERS

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a...
JOAN RIVERS

A heart filled with anger has no room for love.
JOAN LUNDEN

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never t...
JOAN CRAWFORD

Simple things bring infinite pleasure. Yet, it takes us a while to realize that. But once simple is ...
JOAN MARQUES

I've never yet met a man who could look after me. I don't need a husband. What I need is a wife.
JOAN COLLINS

If you're coasting, you're either losing momentum or else you're headed downhill.
JOAN WELSH

Because gratification of a desire leads to the temporary stilling of the mind and the experience of ...
JOAN BORYSENKO

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.

Copied!

Joan Didion

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

Share:

Related

More Joan Didion