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Joan Didion

Joan Didion Quotes

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Famous Joan Didion Quotes

“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. 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. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be…”

SelfJoan DidionOn Keeping A Notebook
Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem
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“Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.”

ShouldYearsMindMadeTwoEndsSelfMatterRecordsParticularPagesLettersShould HaveSeasonsOneselfLikesClarityInnocenceDrySelf RespectDelusionRecallsAshesEmbarrassingFlavorNotebookMisplaced
Book:We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction
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“I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and a proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.”

MenChildrenSelfHandsLightCertainTurnsLostVirtueHairKeysHonorGreenCleanConvictionScalesCertaintyVampireMannersPleasantSelf RespectGood ManTouchingApprovalPassiveProvenCompetenceDoubtfulApprehensionGood MannersStanfordTotemsBetaAmulets
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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“Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.”

WayFirstsLittlesDoeSelfFilmOpportunityLevelsJudgmentCriticismObviousOccupationLecturesFees
Book:We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction
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“Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.”

WellsRealSelfReasonDoneWinningDifficultEffortKindnessInvolvedRemainsIntentionOneselfListsTricksCardsDeceptionTriumphVainHeroicLitSelf DeceptionGood IntentionsAlleysWrong ReasonsPlatitudesShuffleHeroic ActsBack Alleys
Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem
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“If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us… We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.”

IfsLittlesMadeSelfPlayHandsNextRolesDemandDespairPerceptionWeaknessResourcesBlindMeetingsNotionDefeatDeterminedDespiseDoomedUrgency
Author:Joan Didion
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“The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.”

LifeSelfCharacterLife IsBeliefResponsibilityAcceptingSelf EsteemSourceSpringRespectEthicsHard TimesSelf RespectWillingnessSocial ResponsibilityTaking ResponsibilityPersonal ResponsibilityLoving LifeGood CharacterGreat CharacterRespect YourselfIntegrity And CharacterIntegrity CharacterSelf ResponsibilityResponsibility For Your LifeInspirational CharacterMagical ThinkingAccepting ResponsibilityLove And ResponsibilityResponsibilities In LifeWomen Self RespectResponsibility Of Leadership
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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