INTERVIEWER
You have said that writing is a hostile act; I have always wanted to ask you why.
JOAN DIDION
It's hostile in that you're trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It's hostile to try to wrench around someone else's mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.
INTERVIEWER
Are you conscious of the reader as you write? Do you write listening to the reader listening to you?
DIDION
Obviously I listen to a reader, but the only reader I hear is me. I am always writing to myself. So very possibly I'm committing an aggressive and hostile act toward myself.
- The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 71
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