#us

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm. ↗

— Joan Didion

#book #constantly #day #every #every day

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

#because #difficult #europeans #guilty #materialistic

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. ↗

— Joan Didion

#except #first #i #just #makes

One of the things that happens to people in grief is they secretly think they're crazy, because they realize they are thinking things that don't make sense. ↗

— Joan Didion

#crazy #grief #happens #make #people

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#alternative #custodian #foolish #goals #good

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

#daily #day #different #down #dread

Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds. ↗

— Richard Wagner

#music #musician #richard #sounds #than

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. ↗

— Joan Didion

#another #antithetical #because #book #down

I'm not really afraid of the dark, except if I'm walking. The thing that scares me the most is the possibility of walking into a wall and busting my lip. ↗

— Vin Diesel

#busting #dark #except #i #into

I just finished touring, and I'm on a detox thing. It's a heavy detox, so nothing in my belly except water, salt, and cayenne pepper. ↗

— Eddie Vedder

#detox #except #finished #heavy #i