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Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

Joan Didion

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Joan Didion
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: December 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Sacramento
California
Disillusionment
Stripped
Delusion
Innocence
Likes
Oneself
Ends

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I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.
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I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.
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Once I get over maybe a hundred pages, I won't go back to page one, but I might go back to page fifty-five, or twenty, even. But then every once in a while I feel the need to go to page one again and start rewriting.
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Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel.
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We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.
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It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.
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