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Joan Didion

Joan Didion Quotes

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Famous Joan Didion Quotes

“The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can "drive" on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm of the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over.”

PeopleThinkingWayMindKindSeemsLosingCleanMereDrivingSurrenderIntenseRhythmConcentrationLos AngelesSecularCommunionParticipationVocationLanesRaptureResistingParticipatingFreewaysDriving On
Author:Joan Didion
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“Actually, when John died, for the first time I thought - for the first time I realized how old I was, because I'd always thought of myself - when John was alive I saw myself through his eyes and he saw me as how old I was when we got married - and so when he died I kind of looked at myself in a different way. And this has kept on since then. The yellow corvette. When I gave up the yellow corvette, I literally gave up on it, I turned it in on a Volvo station wagon.”

WayFirstsKindDifferentEyeSawsAliveMarriedFirst TimeDiedI RealizedDifferent WaysHis EyesStationsYellowGave UpWagonsVolvo
Author:Joan Didion
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“People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.”

PeopleKindSelfSometimesCharacterLife IsCertainLosesQualityResponsibilityAcceptingMoralVirtueSourceSpringAbstractSelf RespectWillingnessNervesDisplayExhibitsApprovedToughness
Author:Joan Didion
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“As it happened, I didn't grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear.”

MenWantHeartKindStillsFallGrowsLinesKnownForeverGrowing UpVirtueTakenHappenedMy HeartRainRiversWesternArtificialWayneHeroinesBe The Kind Of Woman
Author:Joan Didion
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“In fact I no longer value this kind of memento. I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted. There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did. A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their "things," their totems.”

PeopleWantKindLongFactsValuesLostChildhoodBrokenPeriodsDatingRemindersTotemsMemento
Book:Blue Nights (Enhanced Edition)
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