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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.

Joan Didion

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Joan Didion
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: December 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Sacramento
California
Grief
Aspect
Exactly
Interesting
Tenuous
Read
Craziness
Nothing
Sanity
Really
Express
Seemed

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We imagine things — that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. ... We have no choice, so we do it.
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I have not been the witness I wanted to be.
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To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.
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My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point.
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I lead a very conventional life.
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Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?
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Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff.
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I hadn't thought that I was generally a pack rat, but it turns out I am.
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I've come to a much more controlled idea about death and loss, but I don't think it's possible to come to that much more controlled idea until you've gone through the crazy part . . . I don't mean that I'm controlled. I mean that I gave up the idea that I had control. That's the new control.
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We all survive more than we think we can.
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Grammar is a piano I play by ear.
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The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.
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For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I.
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Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.
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In terms of work, I never felt that I've done it right. I always want to have done it differently, to have done it better, a different way.
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