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Joan Didion

Joan Didion Quotes

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Joan Didion is an American author born on December 5, 1934. Known for her distinctive narrative style and profound insights into modern life, her works have gained recognition for their unique perspective and deep understanding of the complexities of contemporary society.

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All Writing Thinking People Ifs Want Way Grief Self Knows Self Respect Magical Thinking Kind Firsts Different Facts Mean Mourning Book Children Death

Famous Joan Didion Quotes

“I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.”

Inspirational Writing Truth Ability Talent

Book:Blue Nights

Source: Blue Nights

“My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.”

Writing Firsts Bigs Age Mother Given Five Sensible Suggestions My Thoughts Notebook Whining Tablets Stop Whining

Book:We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

Source: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

“There is always a point in the writing of a piece when I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic.”

Writing Rooms Pieces Imagine Leaving Imagine That Strokes Leaving Me One Word

Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching towards Bethlehem

“On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm doing ... I can't do it.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Want Writing I Can Whole Too Much

Author:Joan Didion

“Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really, if the character you're performing is yourself. I don't see that as playing a role. It's just appearing in public.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Sometimes Character Actors Roles Performing Appearing

Author:Joan Didion

“I can't imagine writing if I didn't have a reader. Any more than an actor can imagine acting without an audience.”

Ifs Writing I Can Actors Acting Audience Imagine Reader

Author:Joan Didion

“I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored. She said, "Then write something. Then you can read it." In fact, I had just learned to read, so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write something - and then read it!”

Writing Kind Said Ideas Moments Facts Bigs Mother Black Five Four Complaining Bored Thrilling Tablets

Author:Joan Didion

“You think you have some stable talent which will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Matter Moments Shows Seems Audience Imagine Talent No Matter What That Moment Stable Imagine That

Author:Joan Didion

“It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.”

Writing Book Hard Difficult Dark Safe

Author:Joan Didion

“Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.”

Thinking Way Writing I Can Force Understanding Blue

Author:Joan Didion

“If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.”

Ifs Thinking Way Want Writing Kind Working It

Author:Joan Didion

“There must be times when everybody writes when they feel they're evading writing.”

Author:Joan Didion

“I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don't read them in one sitting. You might read one over the course of a summer, but that isn't what I want to write.”

Want Writing Might Courses Novel Goes On Self Love Summer Sitting Victorian Love To Read

Author:Joan Didion

“When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more like water color.”

Writing Water Fiction Pieces Color Notes Sculpture Writing Fiction

Author:Joan Didion

“When you write, you're always revealing a difficult part of yourself. It may not be a part of yourself that looks as difficult - there are parts that look more difficult - but in fact, they are all difficult, and you get kind of used to doing that. It is sort of the nature of the thing.”

Writing Looks Kind May Facts Used Difficult Revealing

Author:Joan Didion

“I use an IBM Thinkpad. I just use it like a typewriter, but when I started using it in 1987, I thought I won't be able to write anymore, so I thought I'd go back to the typewriter. But you couldn't go back to the typewriter after using the computer.”

Writing Use Able Computer Typewriters Ibm

Author:Joan Didion

“Before I started working on a computer, writing a piece would be like making something up every day, taking the material and never quite knowing where you were going to go next with the material. With a computer it was less like painting and more like sculpture, where you start with a block of something and then start shaping it.”

Writing Would Be Next Knowing Pieces Painting Materials Computer Block Sculpture Never Quit

Author:Joan Didion

“Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery isn't waiting to be made. You've made some of it in the research. As you get deeper into a piece and do more research, the notes are in the direction of the piece - you're actually writing it.”

Writing Waiting

Author:Joan Didion

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

Writing Stories Order Storytelling Telling Stories Thin Air Magical Thinking Good Storytelling

Author:Joan Didion

“Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

Source: Slouching towards Bethlehem

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

Thinking Knows Writing

Author:Joan Didion

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.”

Way Writing Trying Doe Share Impulse Justify Compulsion Cradle Inexplicable

Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching towards Bethlehem

“We write to discover what we think.”

Thinking Writing

Author:Joan Didion

“When I began writing these pages I believed their subject to be children, the ones we have and the ones we wish we had, the ways in which we depend on our children to depend on us, the ways in which we encourage them to remain children, the ways in which they remain more unknown to us than they do to their more casual acquaintances; the ways in which we remain equally opaque to them.”

Way Writing Children Wish Subjects Depends Pages Our Children Acquaintance Casual Opaque

Author:Joan Didion

“As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs...The way I write is who I am, or have become.”

Way Writing Children Long Sentences Who I Am Rhythm Paragraph Residents Magical Thinking

Author:Joan Didion

“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

Writing Children Different Loss Birth Lonely Anxious Notebook Keepers Keeping A Journal Malcontent

Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching towards Bethlehem

“The impulse for much writing is homesickness. You are trying to get back home, and in your writing you are invoking that home, so you are assuaging the homesickness.”

Writing Trying Home Impulse Get Back Back Home Homesickness

Author:Joan Didion

“To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.”

Writing Position Objects Cameras Structure Sentences

Author:Joan Didion

“Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."”

People Way Writing Mind Oneself My Way Imposing Listen To Me Changing Your Mind

Book:Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

Source: Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

“My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point.”

Writing Process Writing Process Filling Rewriting Filling In

Author:Joan Didion

“Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

Thinking Want Writing Mind Mean Has Beens Reason Order My Own Blessed Access No Reason Credentials

Author:Joan Didion

“Short stories demand a certain awareness of one's own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus.”

Writing Stories Certain Focus Awareness Demand Intention Short Story

Author:Joan Didion

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write.”

Writing Mind Has Beens Reason My Own Blessed Access No Reason

Author:Joan Didion

“Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?”

Author:Joan Didion

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

Thinking Want Writing Mean Fearless Writing Advice Magical Thinking

Author:Joan Didion

“Writers are always selling somebody out.”

Writing Selling Journalism Writers And Writing Writing By Writers Creativity And Writing Famous Writers Writing From Famous Authors

Author:Joan Didion

“Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.”

Way Writing Firsts Different Sometimes Process Half Fiction Novel Occasions Nonfiction Dread Writing Fiction Writing Nonfiction

Author:Joan Didion

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

Writing Matter Research Finished Nonfiction Sculpture Writing Nonfiction

Author:Joan Didion

“It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint.”

Writing Facts Light White Brain Blood Higher Evidence Flow Pressure Instant Consistent Afterlife Oxygen Deficit Decrease Higher Power Blood Pressure White Light Blood Flow

Book:The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

“I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.”

Writing Catharsis

Author:Joan Didion

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it”

Writing Share Impulse Compulsion Inexplicable

Book:Slouching towards Bethlehem

Source: Slouching towards Bethlehem

“Somehow writing has always seemed to me to have an element of performance.”

Writing Elements Performances

Author:Joan Didion

“Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.”

Writing Answers Known Novel One Thing Needed Let Me

Book:Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

Source: Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

About the Author

Born: December 5, 1934
Known for: Author
Quotes: 332

Related Topics

Writing Thinking People Ifs Want Way Grief Self Knows Self Respect Magical Thinking Kind Firsts Different Facts Mean Mourning Book Children Death

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

The Year of Magical ThinkingRelated source material

Slouching towards BethlehemRelated source material

The White AlbumRelated source material

Blue NightsRelated source material

Play it as it LaysRelated source material

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected NonfictionRelated source material

Blue Nights (Enhanced Edition)Related source material

A Book of Common PrayerRelated source material

On Self-RespectRelated source material

The Year of Magical Thinking: The PlayRelated source material

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