Joan Didion Never Be the Same Again

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"I retrieve nosotros are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive visitor or not. Otherwise they turn upwards unannounced and surprise united states of america, come hammering on the listen'south door at iv a.m. of a bad night and need to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make apology."
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"We tell ourselves stories in club to live."
― Joan Didion, The White Anthology

"I write entirely to find out what I'thousand thinking, what I'm looking at, what I encounter and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
― Joan Didion

"Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's ain life — is the source from which self-respect springs."
― Joan Didion, On Cocky-Respect

"I'thou non telling you to make the world amend, considering I don't think that progress is necessarily office of the package. I'm just telling you to live in information technology. Not just to suffer it, non just to suffer information technology, not just to pass through it, but to live in information technology. To look at it. To effort to become the picture. To live recklessly. To accept chances. To brand your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you enquire me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you lot that the grave's a fine and private place, merely none I think practice in that location embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or bear on their children. And that's what in that location is to do and get it while yous can and adept luck at it."
― Joan Didion

"We tell ourselves stories in club to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of v. We translate what we see, select the well-nigh workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, peculiarly if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."
― Joan Didion, The White Anthology

"Grief turns out to be a place none of u.s. know until we reach it. We conceptualize (nosotros know) that someone shut to the states could die, but we practice not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined decease. Nosotros misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. Nosotros practice not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and listen. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. Nosotros do not look to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes."
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

"You have to option the places you lot don't walk away from."
― Joan Didion

"To gratuitous us from the expectations of others, to requite the states back to ourselves--there lies the peachy, atypical power of self-respect."
― Joan Didion

"Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my girl 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 upward. Keepers of individual notebooks are a different breed altogether, lone and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at nativity with some presentiment of loss."
― Joan Didion

"we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even equally we push button it away, failed by our very complexity, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for amend or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will ane mean solar day non be at all."
― Joan Didion, The Yr of Magical Thinking

"That was the year, my 20-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted later all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it."
― Joan Didion

"A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches information technology from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves information technology so radically that he remakes it in his own paradigm."
― Joan Didion

"...I retrieve we are well-brash to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we discover them bonny company or not. Otherwise they plough upwardly unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at four a.grand. of a bad nighttime and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all as well soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were."
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in club to keep them with united states of america. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which nosotros must relinquish the expressionless, let them go, proceed them dead. "
― Joan Didion, The Twelvemonth of Magical Thinking

"Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that i likes oneself."
― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

"I don't know what I call up until I write it downwardly."
― Joan Didion

"...quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean "honey" in any vernacular manner, I mean that I was in dear with the city, the fashion y'all love the first person who ever touches you and you never dear anyone quite that fashion again. I recollect walking across Sixty-second Street i twilight that starting time spring, or the second jump, they were all akin for a while. I was late to run across someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the W and reached the mirage."
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"Grief turns out to exist a place none of united states know until we achieve it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we practice non look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined decease. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not look the daze to be obliterative, dislocating to both trunk and listen. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. Nosotros do not expect to be literally crazy, absurd customers who believe that their husband is well-nigh to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forrad movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely exam us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "become through information technology," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the right response to death. Nosotros anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to go dressed that day? Nosotros take no style of knowing that this volition not exist the upshot. We accept no way of knowing that the funeral itself will exist anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and pregnant of the occasion. Nor tin we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the feel of meaninglessness itself."
― Joan Didion, The Yr of Magical Thinking

"Practice not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time lonely."
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

"I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no existent way to bargain with everything we lose."
― Joan Didion, Where I Was From

"People with self-respect showroom a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they brandish what was once called *character,* a quality which, although canonical in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one'due south ain life--is the source from which self-respect springs."
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"Nosotros are not idealized wild things.
We are imperfect mortal beings, enlightened of that mortality even as nosotros push it away, failed past our very complexity, so wired that when we mourn our losses nosotros as well mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As nosotros are no longer. Every bit nosotros volition one twenty-four hour period non be at all."
― Joan Didion, The Yr of Magical Thinking

"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive ane, inexplicable to those who exercise not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that information technology begins or does not brainstorm in the cradle. Although I take felt compelled to write things down since I was 5 years old, I incertitude that my daughter always volition, for she is a singularly blest and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to slumber and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed birthday, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, broken-hearted malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss."
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"Memory fades, retentivity adjusts, memory conforms to what we think nosotros remember."
― Joan Didion, Blue Nights

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. Yous sit down down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
― Joan Didion

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The Year of Magical Thinking
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Play It Every bit It Lays
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Bluish Nights
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