We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library)
“[Didion’s is] one of the most recognizable—and brilliant—literary styles to emerge in America during the past four decades . . . [She is] a great American writer.”—New York Times Book Review“One beautiful sentence follows another . . . Didion has remained a clearheaded and original writer all her long life.”—Newsweek“Her intelligence is as honed as ever . . . Her vision is ice-water clear . . . Didion has captured the mood of America.”—New York Times“Many of us have tried, and failed, to master [Didion’s] gift for the single ordinary deflating word, the word that spins an otherwise flat sentence through five degrees of irony. But her sentences could only be hers.”—Chicago Tribune“I have been trying forever to figure out why [Didion’s] sentences are better than mine or yours . . . Something about [their] cadence. They come at you, if not from ambush, then in gnomic haikus, ice pick laser beams, or waves. Even the space on the page around these sentences is more interesting than it ought to be, as if to square a sandbox for a Sphinx.”—from the Introduction by John Leonard