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Joan Didion

Joan Didion Quotes

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Famous Joan Didion Quotes

“I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the world. Ten pages in, I've already blown it, limited it, made it less, marred it. That's very discouraging. I hate the book at that point. After a while I arrive at an accommodation: Well, it's not the ideal, it's not the perfect object I wanted to make, but maybe—if I go ahead and finish it anyway—I can get it right next time. Maybe I can have another chance.”

IfsWorldWantWellsMadeI CanBookWantedHateTurnsNextChancePerfectObjectsColorTenPagesIdealsI HateMade ItNext TimeDiscouragingAnother ChanceAccommodations
Author:Joan Didion
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“prepare a little hot tea or broth and it should be brought to them . . . without their being asked if they would care for it. Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it ' ... There was something arresting about the matter-of-fact wisdom here, the instinctive understanding of the physiological disruptions... I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of the friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.”

IfsWantShouldFirstsLittlesMatterFactsCareUnderstandingForgetWeekHotTeaDistressMatter Of FactDisruptionContainersPhysiologicalGingerArrestingChinatownHot Tea
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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“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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“The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one's own rules.”

WantAbleAmericaDesireWealthSecretCasesCenturyAbsolutesInstinctSakeAgentsRestaurantsPrivacyLive BySandwichesPacificNineteenth CenturyMobilityPersonal FreedomMoney And PowerFree Agents
Author:Joan Didion
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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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“What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you're alone with yourself and your mantra and your fitness program or whatever it is that you might use to try to control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you just to live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm telling you to live in it. Try and get it. Take chances, make your own work, take pride in it. Seize the moment.”

WorldWantLifeTryingBelieveMomentsUseMightTodayMovingChanceProgressPrideProgramDon't BelieveMessPackagesTake A ChanceClosingMantrasSeize The MomentMight Use
Author:Joan Didion
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