Joan Didion
Joan Didion
Joan Didionis an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work...
new-york cities notion
New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion ...
trying inexplicable compulsion
any compulsion tries to justify itself.
adults ethics
I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic.
anything-worth-having
Anything worth having has its price.
notebook mother writing
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 leaving pieces
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.
believe ethical certain
To believe in'the greater good' isto operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension.
night august president
On the August night in 1933 when General Gerardo Machado, then president of Cuba, flew out of Havana into exile, he took with him five revolvers, seven bags of gold, and five friends, still in their pajamas.
grief interesting sanity
Nothing I read about grief seemed to exactly express the craziness of it; which was the interesting aspect of it to me - how really tenuous our sanity is.
writing light oxygen
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.
book writing dark
It's hard to find a book that's safe to write. Because one always goes to dark or difficult places.
loss absence natural
In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices.
swimming pool swimming-pool
I have always wanted a swimming pool and never had one.
suicide multiple-choice choices
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.