Quote by Joan Didion

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of

Summary

This quote, attributed to Margaret Atwood, encapsulates the anxieties and challenges of writing fiction. It highlights the author's personal experience of writing novels as a daunting and fearful endeavor. Unlike nonfiction, where the writing can be based on facts and research, fiction requires the creation of an entire world out of one's imagination. The quote emphasizes the constant need to invent and construct a narrative, suggesting that writing fiction is a distinct and demanding endeavor, frequently accompanied by apprehension and uncertainty.

Topics

Business

By Joan Didion

Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Katherine Mansfield

Excellence

Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you.

Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience.

Praise

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way pa

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

Parenting

Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends, who can never

Silent companions of the lonely hour,Friends, who can never alter or forsake,Who for inconstant roving have no power,And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take,--Let me return to you; this turmoil endingWhich worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,And, o'er your old familiar pages bending,Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought:Till, haply meeting there, from time to time,Fancies, the audible echo of my own,'Twill be like hearing in a foreign climeMy native language spoke in friendly tone,And with a sort of welcome I shall dwellOn these, my unripe musings, told so well.

Caroline Norton, To My Books

Books

The poor monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be

The poor monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at this display of anger.

Henry Walter Bates

Anger

No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no r

No retreat. No retreat. They must conquer or die who've no retreat.

Victory

The happier person is one, that acknowledges and accepts lif

The happier person is one, that acknowledges and accepts life won't get any better than this.

Anthony Liccione

Life Happiness Contentment Acceptance Realization Acknowledgement

But John Landis wrote a good relationship which is really wh

But John Landis wrote a good relationship which is really what the film's about. A very straightforward young woman who's very sure of herself and she meets a young man who needs some taking care of.

Relationship

The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high

The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.

Religion Science Skepticism

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

Albert Einstein

I want to be remembered as somebody that tried to respect he

I want to be remembered as somebody that tried to respect her integrity as an artist and as a person. And I don't want to be in any box. I don't want to be one thing.

Respect

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Martin Luther King Jr.

War Military Social Change