“Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.”

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.