Quotes by Joan Didion

Explore a curated collection of 40 quotes by Joan Didion. Discover timeless wisdom, insightful thoughts, and memorable words that have inspired readers around the world. Browse through the gallery below and click on any quote to read more.

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 — Joan Didion
Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? — Joan Didion
Another thing I need to do, when I'm near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it...Somehow the book does — Joan Didion
The apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and why we do want, between what we officially admire and sec — Joan Didion
[P]eople with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. — Joan Didion
I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the o — Joan Didion
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 w — Joan Didion
Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them. — Joan Didion
This was an adequate enough performance, as improvisations go. The only problem was that my entire education, everything — Joan Didion
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolabl — Joan Didion
Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.They remember the tree that died, the gull that splattered onto — Joan Didion
We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the de — Joan Didion
Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing wit — Joan Didion
I realized that for the time being I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world. — Joan Didion
My father was dead, my mother was dead, I would need for a while to watch for mines, but I would still get up in the mor — Joan Didion
She knew all the indices to the idle lonely, never bought a small tube of toothpaste, never dropped a magazine in her sh — Joan Didion
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. And I have asked to be where no storms come. — 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 n — Joan Didion
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images — Joan Didion
Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone. — Joan Didion