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
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
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