When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
—Joan Didion
Topics: Morals, Morality
To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.
—Joan Didion
Topics: Envy, Jealousy
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.
—Joan Didion
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