A Quote by Joan Didion

I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing. — © Joan Didion
I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.
I would say I locked into my persona pretty early; I wouldn't say it's how I am naturally, but it's how I am naturally when I'm on a stage in front of people. That anxiety makes me be the character that I am.
Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out. Breathing in, I am grateful for this moment. Breathing out, I smile. Breathing in, I am aware of the preciousness of this day. Breathing out, I vow to live deeply in this day.
I write a lot and I will have some originals on the record. I think it is a mistake for an artist like me to think I am a better writer than Cole Porter. I think it is important to realize what my strengths are. I do like to write and I'm not shabby but I don't think I'm the most brilliant writer. I think it would be a shame and sort so egotistical to say I don't need these wonderful writers. These men created works of art and wrote hundreds of beautiful songs. It would be a mistake for me to say at this point in my career that I am so good.
When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer."
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved.
I'm not a sketch writer. I know what I am: I have a sensitive comedic sensibility. What turns me on is subtle neurosis. That's my game. I'm not an action writer or a thriller writer and I'm not a sketch writer. I don't pretend to be those things. Then it would not be fun. Then you are in a space where this is painful.
That air. The air afterwards. I wanted to breathe it in. It felt right to breathe it in. Because we were breathing them in, weren't we? And the building. We were breathing it all in. And I thought, there's a part of this that's actually a part of me now. I now have that responsibility. I am alive, and I am breathing, and I can do the things this dust can't do.
I try to turn a written thing, when I'm in trouble with it, into a spoken thing: I start imagining what I would say to someone if I were trying to tell the story or make the argument.
When your mind is quiet, you enter into the flow of love, and you just flow from one moment to the next as naturally as breathing. Whatever arises, I embrace it with love in the moment. This is my practice of polishing the mirror to reflect love. In this moment there is just awareness and love. If someone asks me how to get into their heart, I give them this practice: I Am Loving Awareness.
In Chicago, if you tell someone you're a writer, they look at you suspiciously - as if to say "yeah, right." In New York, people don't question the idea. If you say you're a writer, that's what you are.
To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings just by changing your breathing.
Every writer, big or small, needs to say or write that the genius is always hissed at by his contemporaries. Naturally, this is not true, it happens only occasionally and often by chance. But this need within the writer is enlightening.
I am a naturally buoyant person. I am a naturally energetic person... always have been. I have to say that it's important for everyone, but especially for women (given our bone density issues) to walk - even ambling for a couple of miles is better than not walking at all.
We live in a very self-absorbed age. I guess it's naturally human to think about my own problems as somehow greater than someone else's. I think when any one of us begins to think that way, it might be well to look beyond ourselves. Who am I to say that I am more handicapped, or suffering more, than someone else?
[Grandfather] would manufacture funnies with Grandmother before she died about how he was in love with other women who were not her. She knew it was only funnies because she would laugh in volumes. 'Anna,' he would say, 'I am going to marry that one with the pink hat.' And she would say, 'To whom are you going to marry her?' And he would say, 'To me.' I would laugh very much in the back seat, and she would say to him, 'But you are no priest.' And he would say, 'I am today.' And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.
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