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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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“It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.”

PeopleHas BeensStatesMightAmericaPurposeSocialUnitedUnited StatesColdPromiseLateSpringBraveGreat MenSteadyUnited States Of AmericaMight Have BeenApprehensionUneasyLate Spring
Author:Joan Didion
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“If you are doing a piece about somebody, even if you admire them tremendously and express that in the piece, express that admiration, if they're not used to being written about, if they're civilians, [...] they're not used to seeing themselves through other people's eyes. So you will always see them from a slightly different angle than they see themselves, and they feel a little betrayed by that.”

PeopleIfsFeelsLittlesDifferentEyeUsedPiecesWrittenSeeingAdmireAdmirationAngleBetrayedCiviliansDifferent Angles
Author:Joan Didion
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“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsMindWellsUsedNightTurnsTermCompanyDoorsDemandSurpriseUsed To BeAttractiveBetrayedYour PastDesertedAmendsNoddingBethlehemMagical ThinkingBad NightMaking Amends
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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“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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“You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.”

PeopleIfsWantSaidPastRememberFacesMemoriesGoneWonderfulMarriedMassPhotographDefinitionsCardsFuneralUniformsClosetsInvitationsSolaceCrackedFadedTimes PastWonderful Memories
Book:Blue Nights
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“It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.”

PeopleThinkingMenWantLoveDreamLastsDesireNationsSocialVirtueImpossibleSeeingRemainsAdmirePrizeAntisocial
Author:Joan Didion
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“We are repeatedly left, in other words, with no further focus than ourselves, a source from which self-pity naturally flows. Each time this happens I am struck again by the permanent impassibility of the divide. Some people who have lost a husband or a wife report feeling that person's presence, receiving that person's advice. Some report actual sightings, what Freud described in "Mourning and Melancholia" as "a clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis." Others describe not a visible apparition but just a "very strongly felt presence."”

PeoplePersonsSelfFeelingsHappensLostLeftFeltFocusWifeAdviceObjectsSourceHusbandFlowPityMediumsPermanentMourningVisibleReportsDividesVery StrongReceivingSelf PityClingingPsychosisApparitions
Author:Joan Didion
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