Joan Didion Quotes & Sayings (Page 10)

“I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.”

“My own fantasies of what life would be like at 24 tended to the more spectacular.”

“Not much about California, on its own preferred terms, has encouraged its children to see themselves as connected to one another.”

“I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe.”

“I never think people are too careful with me.”

“Of course, you always think about how it will be read. I always aim for a reading in one sitting.”

“The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You think you have some stable talent that will show no matter what you're writing, and if it doesn't seem to be getting across to the audience once, you can't imagine that moment when it suddenly will. Gradually, gradually you gain that confidence.”