Joan Didion

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it.”

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.”

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away...when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer.”

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

“Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.”

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its infinite power.”

“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.”

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.”

“Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.”

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”

“Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self-respect springs.”

“To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.”

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”

“Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.”