American - Author | December 5, 1934 -
It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.
Joan Didion
PeopleMeChristmasTalkNeverWho
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.
ThoughtNever ForgetForgetNever
I've never been keen on open adoption. It doesn't seem to solve the main problem with adoption, which is that somebody feels she was abandoned by someone else.
SomeoneProblemNeverSheOpenSeem
We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
LiveExperienceIdeasLineNarrative
Memories are what you no longer want to remember.
MemoriesRememberYouWantLonger
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.
GoodParentsPeopleThinkParent
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.
ListeningDreamAlwaysWriterReader
The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.
LifeChildrenFancyOrderOwnThan
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.
VictoryStartDoingPossibilities
Yes, but another writer I read in high school who just knocked me out was Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy all in one weekend and couldn't put it down - I locked myself in my room. Now that was antithetical to every other book I was reading at the time because Dreiser really had no style, but it was powerful.
TimeStyleMyselfSchoolMeReading
I hadn't thought that I was generally a pack rat, but it turns out I am.
I AmThoughtRatOutPackTurns
Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.
GoodWalkListeningSomeoneYouBad
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