To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. – Joan Didion
I write entirely to find out what Im thinking, what Im looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. – Joan Didion
Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up. – Joan Didion
A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye. – Joan Didion