Quote

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.

Joan Didion

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joan Didion
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: December 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Sacramento
California
Way
Terms
Always
Term
Never
Felt
Better
Done
Right
Different
Work
Differently

More quotes by Joan Didion

Image
I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.
Joan Didion
Image
I lead a very conventional life.
Joan Didion
Image
I did consider marriage and motherhood extreme and doomed commitments. Not out of any experience of them as such, but it was simply the way I looked at things.
Joan Didion
Image
Marriage is memory, marriage is time.
Joan Didion
Image
I didn’t like it [computer] when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is a kind of different process. You’ve got research, you’ve got your notes, You can block out what you want to work on for the next 10 pages and put it in another file, and then you can kind of carve it into shape
Joan Didion
Image
The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.
Joan Didion
Image
Vegas is the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification.
Joan Didion
Image
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.
Joan Didion
Image
You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part.
Joan Didion
Image
For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I.
Joan Didion
Image
The apparent ease of California life is an illusion, and those who believe the illusion will live here in only the most temporary way.
Joan Didion
Image
I was relying on a kind of natural transition - the transitions made by someone who is slightly deranged.
Joan Didion
Image
The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power's sake but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.
Joan Didion
Image
New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion.
Joan Didion
Image
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.
Joan Didion
Image
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
Joan Didion
Image
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.
Joan Didion
Image
I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.
Joan Didion
Image
Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You don't feel that you have it at the time you're going through it.
Joan Didion
Image
Grammar is a piano I play by ear.
Joan Didion