#writ

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought? ↗

— Joan Didion

#could #dreaming #find #i #only

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. ↗

— Joan Didion

#always #around #bad #dream #else

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream. ↗

— Joan Didion

#dream #into #listening #reader #their

I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't realize then that it's the same impulse. It's make-believe. It's performance. ↗

— Joan Didion

#girl #i #impulse #little #little girl

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers. ↗

— Joan Didion

#definition #extraterrestrial #fancy #higher #life

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. ↗

— Joan Didion

#audience #confidence #gain #getting #gradually

A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting. ↗

— Christian Dior

#handwriting #her #more #perfume #tells

Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#author #because #book #bringing #each

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#end #end product #every #generation #history

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer. ↗

— E. L. Doctorow

#aspirations #began #book #child #done