The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

"I was a child of atheists, but I had an intuition of God. The days seemed created for our worship. There was grass and flowers and clouds. And then there were the words for these things: mare’s tails and a mackerel sky, daylillies and lady’s slippers and lilicas and hyacinth. There were words even for the weeds: goldenrod and ragweed and Queen Anne’s lace. You could feed yourself on the grandeur of the sounds."

The Long Goodbye: A Memoir, p. 2
By Meghan O’Rourke
Published 2012

Blue Nights


“Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.”

Blue Nights, p. 66
By Joan Didion
Published 2011