Joan Didion

The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.

To those of us who remained committed mainly to the exploration of moral distinctions and ambiguities, the feminist analysis may have seemed a particularly narrow and cracked determinism.

To believe in 'the greater good' is to operate, necessarily, in a certain ethical suspension.

You aren't sure if you're making the right decision - about anything, ever.

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.