Best Joan Didion Quotes

I never think people are too careful with me. — Joan Didion

The last sentence in a piece is another adventure. It should open the piece up. — Joan Didion

Style is character. — Joan Didion

For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I. — Joan Didion

Aging and its evidence remain life's most predictable events, yet they also remain matters we prefer to leave unmentioned, unexplored. — Joan Didion

Her choices, all.
Sentimental choices, things she remembered.
I remembered them too. — Joan Didion

Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss. — Joan Didion

I was cold because nothing in my body was working as it should. — Joan Didion

one more piece of evidence that assigned reading makes nothing happen. — Joan Didion

pupils were fixed in the position of wide black dilatation that signifies brain death, and obviously would never respond to light again. — Joan Didion

When I am near the end of a book, I have to sleep in the same room with it. — Joan Didion

California: The west coast of Iowa. — Joan Didion

Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control. — Joan Didion

Did not the Donner-Reed Party, after all, eat its own dead to reach Sacramento? — Joan Didion

Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. — Joan Didion

He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them — Joan Didion

A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell. — Meghan Daum

Call me the author. — Joan Didion

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? — Joan Didion

When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children. — Joan Didion

I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one. — Joan Didion

If the dead were truly to come back, what would they come back knowing? Could we face them? We who allowed them to die? — Joan Didion

Someday it all comes. — Joan Didion

Do not whine ... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone. — Joan Didion

Someone who lives always with a plane schedule in the drawer lives on a slightly different calendar. — Joan Didion

You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part. — Joan Didion

The power of grief to derange the mind has in fact been exhaustively noted. — Joan Didion

No one should ever be forced upon those in grief, and all over-emotional people, no matter how near or dear, should be barred absolutely. — Joan Didion

The way you got sideswiped was by going back. I — Joan Didion

I realized that for the time being I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world. — Joan Didion