A Quote by Joan Didion

I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the world. Ten pages in, I've already blown it, limited it, made it less, marred it. That's very discouraging. I hate the book at that point. After a while I arrive at an accommodation: Well, it's not the ideal, it's not the perfect object I wanted to make, but maybe?if I go ahead and finish it anyway?I can get it right next time. Maybe I can have another chance.

Joan Didion

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Accommodation After Another Another Chance Anyway Arrive Blown Book Chance Color Discouraging Every Finish Get Go Hate I Hate Ideal Less Limited Made Made It Make Maybe Next Next Time Object Pages Perfect Point Right Start Ten Time Turn Very Want Wanted Well While World

Quote Author

Joan Didion
American - Author
Born: December 5, 1934

Joan Didion

If you want to make pictures and enjoy making them, you better go out and make something that a lot of people want to see. And then they'll turn you lose and let you make what you want. And then maybe you can do some of the things that you want to do. But as a beginner, you haven't got a chance.

Howard Hawks

A book is something that young readers can experience on their own time. They decide when to turn the page. They'll put their arm right on the page so you can't turn it because they're not ready to go to the next page yet. They just want to look at it again, or they want to read the book over and over because they really enjoy setting the pace themselves.

Jan Brett

The way I feel about every book is this: you don't finish it, you abandon it. All of my books have in some sense failed, otherwise I wouldn't write another one. If I wrote the perfect book, I wouldn't have to write again, and I wouldn't want to. That's not true for everyone, but it's true for me. I could walk away then. But so far I haven't managed to do it.

Russell Banks

Sometimes I'll be fifty, sixty pages into something and I'll still be calling a character "X." I don't have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. Then I start to love them. By the time I finish the book, I love them so much that I want to stay with them. I don't want to leave them ever.

Joan Didion

I'm 33 and in my "Jesus year," and I want it all right now. I want a perfect body. I want to have a perfect love affair. I want every member of my family to be healthy and happy. And I want the world to save itself and for America to realize that it has to give up its idea of being an empire. Wait until I hit 40; then it'll all come crumbling down.

Rufus Wainwright

Do you know a book that you are willing to put under your head for a pillow when you lie dying? Very well; that is the book you want to study while you are living. There is but one such book in the world.

Joseph Cook

I want to be a female artist who is honest. I want to encourage other girls to be honest with who they are and not try to be picture perfect, because it's a woman's imperfections that make her perfect anyway.

Tali Lennox

Nothing is a matter of age. It's really in the person because you can publish book after book after book and still want that golden apple. And maybe it's the reality principle that has hit me. I believe that a career is very different from writing. My career is a certain kind of career.

Lynne Tillman

I always want to live long enough to finish the book I'm working on and see it published. But then I start another book before the previous one is in the stores, so I always have a reason to go on.

Phyllis A. Whitney

I tended to give a book a chance and another chance and another, sometimes seeing it all the way to the end, still hoping for for it turn out different. Maybe I was confused about what you owed a book. What you owed people, for that matter, real or fictional.

Deb Caletti

You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.

Halsey

Considering retirement? When that happens, I don't want that to be the story of whatever the season it is. I don't want to have to be talking about it all the time. My plan is when the time is up, it'll be time to hang it up. When that comes, it'll come. But right now, I don't have any clue as to when that'll be. It's been that way the last couple of years. . . . I've often felt if I ever get to a point where I don't want to go recruiting and can't get excited about it, then maybe it's time. That's a pretty good indication that's probably it. And I haven't reached that point at all yet.

LaVell Edwards

There are some things fundamentally off about the stance of the book. And maybe that's okay; maybe every book is flawed, and great books, as flawed as they might be, articulate a moral argument that the reader then carries forward. The critique to this model is, of course, to ask: Should a book be ever so perfect that you come out of it with complete moral agreement that can be sustained?

George Saunders

It's difficult to explain love. You want to explain water? You need a book for it. There are many different ways to explain what water is. Love is big, it's very big. I know that I have tons of it. But maybe we don't want to open up so much, and we think, maybe we don't have so much, but yes, you know that you have tons of love. We all do. Through that love we can connect, we can heal each other, we can make people, all of us, happy, joyful, and make a better world.

Yoko Ono

Maybe I'll just write books. I'd like to make another movie, but I don't want to go back and [do] what they want you to do, to make it for a million dollars. I did that. I don't need a lot, but I need what I used to get, and they don't give you that anymore.

John Waters

A Quote by Joan Didion

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