joandidion – Mark Larson

2009-12-14 ~ Mark

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook [pdf].

2009-12-09 ~ Mark

To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. …. The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. …. The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.

Joan Didion (via bobulate)