Joan Didion

 NY Times: Migraines, Marriage, Mourning: Joan Didion Showed Us How to Bare All by Frank Bruni

"...I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: You are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest other people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor.”