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Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

— Joan Didion

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Memory

More quotes by Joan Didion

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

Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges.

Why I Write (1975)

Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned.

Why I Write (1975)

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Women and elephants never forget an injury.

Saki Reginald (1904)

Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable.

Colin Wilson The Philosopher's Stone (1969)

To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.

Thomas Campbell

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting.

William James The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Joan Didion (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.