If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have … - Joan Didion

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You can recognize in your own reading habits what writers are doing that works and what doesn't. I'm becoming much more aware of that after reading a decade of student stories.

Joan Didion

If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us… We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

Demand, Hand, Hands, Notions, Play, Self

Same Author Quotes

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.

Cure, Cures, Dissatisfaction, Jealousy, See, Self

we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.

Away, Bereavement, Inspirational, Loss, Mortal, Mortality

I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.

Like, Ought, Parent, People, Thinking

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

Ability, Depends, Mastery, Self, Think, Thinking

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

Choices, Free, Memories, Night, Span, Time