Joan Didion Quotes

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

Joan Didion

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Quotes to Explore

• My interior is very, very dense - Proustian-looking, sort of Henry James. The walls are covered in pictures, and I transformed the big drawing room into a library lined with books.

  

  Hamish Bowles
  • Drawing
  • Library
  • Walls

• I found it interesting that as people become more technically oriented all over the world, at the same time people are becoming increasingly spiritual. The success of the Da Vinci code - even though it was a great yawn - also showed people's interest in religion.

  

  Barbara Walters
  • People
  • Time
  • World

• I'm Irish on St. Patrick's Day. I'm Italian on Columbus Day. I'm a New Yorker every day.

  

  Tamara Tunie
  • Day
  • Everyday
  • New

• Because pandemics almost always begin with the transmission of an animal microbe to a human, it's work that takes me all around the globe - from rain forest hunting camps of central Africa to wild animal markets of east Asia.

  

  Nathan Wolfe
  • Work
  • Animal
  • Rain

• I don't have a great instrument. I don't have the kind of ungodly control over my voice and body that great actors have. And I've worked with enough great actors to know that I'm not one.

  

  Aaron Sorkin
  • Great
  • Control
  • Voice

• I don't believe love goes away just because you're buried in a casket.

  

  Nancy Grace
  • Believe
  • Love
  • For Him

• You never want to sound bitter about critics, because they're entitled to do their job, too, but I place much more trust in a person who I can look in the eye and someone who I know I share some kind of taste with - so my friends, for instance. For me, a critic is unknown and therefore irrelevant.

  

  Laura Donnelly
  • Job
  • Friends
  • Trust

• Facebook can be an accumulation of different intelligences. Ask a question, translated into many languages and somebody, somewhere in the world, will have an answer.

  

  Yuri Milner
  • World
  • Different
  • Question

• It was hard to write or compose... we just had to go back and finish making songs. If we make 20 songs, we'll throw away 10.

  

  Yolandi Visser
  • Back
  • Finish
  • Throw

• I would love to be a professional athlete. When I was living in Mexico as a teenager, I did seven years of gymnastics and went to the Junior Olympics. I was getting to the level of going to the international competitions, but I was only 14, and my parents were really worried because they did not want that to be my life.

  

  Karla Souza
  • Life
  • Parents
  • Worried

• St. Paul's arose like some huge mountain above the enormous mass of smaller buildings.

  

  Karl Philipp Moritz
  • Like
  • Mountain
  • Buildings

• Bikes and planes aren't about going fast or having fun; they're toys, but serious ones.

  

  Harrison Ford
  • Fun
  • Serious
  • Having Fun

• Anybody can do a deal. The tough part is doing the deal at the right time, being strategic.

  

  N. Murray Edwards
  • Time
  • Doing
  • Tough

• A discontented young fellow, filled with self pride; he certainly should have considered it an honor to be sent on so respectable an embassy as he was.

  

  Zebulon Pike
  • Pride
  • Honor
  • Self

• The interpretive element of 'Lost' - the fact that you immediately need, as soon as the episode is over, to seek out a community of people to express your own thoughts about it, understand what they thought about it and form an opinion - that's the bread and butter of the show.

  

  Damon Lindelof
  • People
  • Community
  • Lost

• I don't need adult supervision.

  

  Pat Paulsen
  • Need
  • Adult
  • Supervision

• O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

  

  Saint Teresa of Avila
  • God
  • Soul
  • Praise

• Holiday binge-buying has deep roots in American culture: department stores have been associating turkey gluttony with its spending equivalent since they began sponsoring Thanksgiving Day parades in the early 20th century.

  

  Adam Davidson
  • American
  • Culture
  • Day

• The environmental movement's focus on the Keystone XL pipeline issue really used to baffle me.

  

  Matthew Yglesias
  • Focus

• Love, thine is the future. Death, I use thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, there shall be in the future neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance nor blood for blood.

  

  Victor Hugo
  • Love
  • Future
  • Death

• In a romantic comedy, it's usually a good idea to have people who can't stand the fact that they are attracted to each other.

  

  Amanda Peet
  • People
  • Good
  • Comedy

• I can be upset by malice. Most critics are very poor poets. Poetry is a craft that takes a lot to appreciate, and there are some critics who have no ear for it. An irresponsible critic can do a lot of psychic damage, but eventually, they don't affect your work.

  

  Derek Walcott
  • Work
  • Poetry

• What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.

  

  Ralph Marston
  • Life
  • Gift
  • Thank You

• Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

  

  Joan Didion