“I do not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree....Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies.”

American writer and journalist

Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is known as one of the figures associated with New Journalism. Her work is linked with the movement that brought literary techniques into reporting, alongside writers such as Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe. Her writing is often remembered for that journalistic style and for the influence she had on modern nonfiction.