Before Id written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers – when youve got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other peoples ability to do that. – Joan Didion
Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power. – Joan Didion
Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power. – Joan Didion
To have that sense of ones 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. – Joan Didion