Joan Didion said this quote

Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.

~ Joan Didion

I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.

~ Joan Didion

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.

~ Joan Didion

We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.

~ Joan Didion