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e94b8b7
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To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that details one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening.
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Joan Didion |
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0e44cfb
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I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters.
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Joan Didion |
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db666eb
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But the fact of it was that I liked it out there, a ruin devoid of human vanities, clean of human illusions, an empty place reclaimed by the weather where a woman plays an organ to stop the wind's whining and an old man plays ball with a dog named Duke.
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Joan Didion |
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de5126f
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The second kind of grief was "complicated grief," which was also known in the literature as "pathological bereavement" and was said to occur in a variety of situations. One situation in which pathological bereavement could occur, I read repeatedly, was that in which the survivor and the deceased had been unusually dependent on one another." --
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Joan Didion |
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787307d
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Doliul e diferit. Doliul nu stie ce-i distanta. Durerea vine in valuri, paroxisme, revelatii subite care-ti taie genunchii, iti iau vederea si iti tulbura curgerea zilelor.
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Joan Didion |
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df48a3d
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I knew that it would cost something sooner or later--because I did not belong there, did not come from there--but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs.
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Joan Didion |
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993eb63
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We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate.
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fate
silent-generation
meaningless
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Joan Didion |
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f048f22
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De ce trebuie sa ai mereu dreptate, imi spunea el. N-a inteles vreodata ca in mintea mea n-aveam niciodata dreptate.
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Joan Didion |
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4062bf8
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Doliul se dovedeste a fi un loc pe care il cunoastem doar atunci cand ajungem la el. [...] Nu putem sti dinainte despre faptul nesfarsitei absente care urmeaza (si aici sta esenta deosebirii intre doliul imaginat de noi si cel real), golul, opusul extrem al sensului, succesiunea inexorabila de momente in timpul carora ne vom confrunta cu experienta zadarniciei insesi.
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Joan Didion |
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a1ee571
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De fiecare data aceste rugaminti pentru prezenta lui nu au facut decat sa-mi intareasca constiinta tacerii definitive care ne-a despartit.
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Joan Didion |
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9a92a67
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Some time later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went "but where is the schoolgirl who used to be me," and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that. I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evid..
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Joan Didion |
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c0ef4dd
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Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.
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Joan Didion |
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5681a53
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or amended and saved at 1:08 p.m. that afternoon
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Joan Didion |
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2dfee80
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Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself...
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Joan Didion |
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49cf947
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Out where the skies are a trifle bluer Out where friendship's a little truer That's where the West begins.
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Joan Didion |
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1b25360
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As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.
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Joan Didion |
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9a5cb88
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I am dropping my keys on the table inside the door before I fully remember. There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back. "I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense," C. S. Lewis wrote after the death of his wife. "It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling ..
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Joan Didion |
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283d85a
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I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.
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Joan Didion |
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c68efbd
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In New Orleans they have mastered the art of the motionless. In
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Joan Didion |
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6b74027
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Someday it all comes.
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Joan Didion |
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5afa914
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In Coffeeville, Miss., at 6 p.m., there was a golden light and a child swinging in it, swinging from a big tree, over a big lawn, back and forth in front of a big airy house. To be a white middle-class child in a small southern town must be on certain levels the most golden way for a child to live in the United States.
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Joan Didion |
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a235faa
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To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable home movie that documents one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for each screening.
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Joan Didion |
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3d557bf
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Why make this call and not just say what you wanted? His eyes. His blue eyes. His blue imperfect eyes.
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Joan Didion |
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e89a21e
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A certe latitudini c'e un arco di tempo che precede e segue il solstizio d'estate, poche settimane appena, in cui il crepuscolo diventa lungo e azzurro. [...] Passi davanti a una vetrina, t'incammini verso Central Park e ti trovi a nuotare nell'azzurro: la luce e azzurra, e nel giro di un'ora questo azzurro s'infittisce, diventa piu intenso proprio mentre si oscura e sbiadisce, infine si avvicina all'azzurro delle vetrate in una giornata li..
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Joan Didion |
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00dd201
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it is hard for me to believe that Cornelius Vanderbilt did not sense, at some point in time, in some dim billiard room of his unconscious, that when he built "The Breakers" he damned himself."
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wealth
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Joan Didion |
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7df8257
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Anthony Lewis had written in The New York Times in September of 1975, "only increases the elements of morbidity and paranoia and fantasy in this country. It romanticizes crimes that are terrible because of their lack of purpose. It obscures our necessary understanding, all of us, that in this life there is often tragedy without reason."
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Joan Didion |
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e26935e
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The search for conspiracy," Anthony Lewis had written in The New York Times in September of 1975, "only increases the elements of morbidity and paranoia and fantasy in this country. It romanticizes crimes that are terrible because of their lack of purpose. It obscures our necessary understanding, all of us, that in this life there is often tragedy without reason."
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Joan Didion |
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9c27fd0
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Writers are always selling somebody out.
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Joan Didion |
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cfa5abe
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Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.
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Joan Didion |