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Essays
Quotes

Joan Didion

About
Books
Essays
Quotes
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The White Album
The White Album

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.”

The White Album
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

The Year of Magical Thinking
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“[O]ne of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened before.” 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
A Book of Common Prayer
A Book of Common Prayer

“We all remember what we need to remember.”

A Book of Common Prayer
The White Album
The White Album

“That no one dies of migraine seems to someone deep in an attack as an ambiguous blessing.” 

The White Album
Run River
Run River

“She hoped that although he could not hear her she could somehow imprint her ordinary love upon his memory through all eternity, hoped he would rise thinking of her, we were each other, we were each other, not that it mattered much in the long run but what else mattered as much.”

Run River
Blue Nights
Blue Nights

"Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone."

Blue Nights
Play It as It Lays
Play It as It Lays

“There was silence. Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind she would be able to play it through, do the right thing, whatever that meant.” 

Play It as It Lays
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“We are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” 

The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”

The Year of Magical Thinking
A Book of Common Prayer
A Book of Common Prayer

“I think I have never known anyone who led quite so unexamined a life.”

A Book of Common Prayer
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.”

The Year of Magical Thinking
Blue Nights
Blue Nights

"In theory mementos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see."

Blue Nights
The White Album
The White Album

"And then, at that exact dispirited moment when there seemed no one at all willing to play the proletariat, along came the women's movement."

The White Album
Play It as It Lays
Play It as It Lays

“One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.” 

Play It as It Lays
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.” 

The Year of Magical Thinking
Where I Was From
Where I Was From

“Madness, it became convenient to believe quite early on, came with the territory, on the order of earthquakes.” 

Where I Was From
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.” 

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Blue Nights
Blue Nights

“I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.” 

Blue Nights
Blue Nights
Blue Nights

“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.” 

Blue Nights
Where I Was From
Where I Was From

“One difference between the West and the South, I came to realize in 1970, was this: in the South they remained convinced that they had bloodied their land with history. In California we did not believe that history could bloody the land, or even touch it.” 

Where I Was From
Play It as It Lays
Play It as It Lays

"Tell me what matters," BZ said.
"Nothing," Maria said.”

Play It as It Lays
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” 

The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” 

The Year of Magical Thinking
Where I Was From
Where I Was From

“I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.” 

Where I Was From
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