We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of th… - Joan Didion

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We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

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About Joan Didion

Joan Didion (December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer known as a novelist, journalist and prose stylist.

Biography information from Wikiquote

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We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.

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