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.
Joan DidionRead
Why do you always have to be right. Why do you always have to have the last word. For once in your life just let it go.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of letting go of the need to be right in conflicts.
Joan Didion's quote reflects on the human tendency to cling to being correct in arguments and discussions, highlighting how this need can hinder personal connections. It encourages a shift in perspective, prompting individuals to prioritize harmony and understanding over the compulsion to always have the final say or to prove their point. By letting go, one can foster more meaningful relationships and promote peace in interactions.
Themes
Let GoRelationshipsArgumentHarmonyCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
During a team meeting, when disagreements arise, one might use this quote to remind colleagues to focus on solutions instead of being right.
More from Joan Didion
All quotes βThe truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.
Joan DidionRead
Memories are what you no longer want to remember.
Joan DidionRead
It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent.
Joan DidionRead
I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?
Joan DidionRead
Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.
Joan DidionRead
Similar quotes
A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm.
Jennifer EganRead
The depth of this conflict, which is more than one hundred years old, requires us to find a way to communicate... so that the residents of the Middle East, Jews and Arabs alike, can live not as if they were forced to live together, but rather destined to live together.
Reuven RivlinRead
I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
Bharati MukherjeeRead
No one would have known, from how he held my hand, [that] over the years of heartache he had hatched a plot to change my life forever. He held his grip and would not let me go. I do not know what joins the parts of an atom, but it seems what binds one human to another is pain.
Andrew Sean GreerRead
You have a specific and important mission, that of keeping alive the relationship between the faith and the cultures of the peoples to whom you belong. . . . [W]e have to follow Christ along the concrete path of our daily lives so that he can transform us.
Pope FrancisRead
Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.
TacitusRead