Sunday, February 10, 2013

Writerly Wisdom

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” 
― Joan DidionThe White Album




3 comments:

  1. Thanks, Susan! I have a hard time reading her at times because her experiences (losing both her only daughter and her husband) are so searingly painful. But if anyone can speak to finding the sense or story in grief and turning it into prose - it's her.

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  2. Thanks for this, J! I have been chewing on this for the last two days, it's amazing.

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