Daily Dose

From Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays, by Joan Didion

SINCE

"Since the note is in my notebook, it presumably has some meaning to me."

From On Keeping a Notebook

Daily Dose

From South and West: From a Notebook, by Joan Didion

AT THE CENTER

"At the center of this story there is a terrible secret, a kernel of cyanide, and the secret is that the story doesn't matter, doesn't make any difference, doesn't figure."

From California Notes

Daily Dose

From South and West: From a Notebook, by Joan Didion

NOTE

"NOTE: On being asked for identification when I ordered a drink in the rural South.  Before I came south I had not been taken for seventeen in considerable years, but but several times in that month I had to prove I was eighteen.  It is assumed that grown women will have their hair done, is all I could think."

From An Afternoon with Stan Torgerson

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Blue Nights, by Joan Didion

SEASONS

"Seasons in Southern California suggest violence, but not necessarily death."

From Chapter 13

Coldly Californian Clerihew

JOAN DIDION

Even the most warmly quotidian
Of essays by LA's Joan Didion,
Would seem, in almost every instance,
To come from some quite chilly distance.