"The freeway experience ... is the only secular communion Los Angeles has. Mere driving on the freeway is in no way the same as participating in it. Anyone can "drive" on the freeway, and many people with no vocation for it do, hesitating here and resisting there, losing the rhythm of the lane change, thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participation requires total surrender, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis, a rapture-of-the-freeway. The mind goes clean. The rhythm takes over."

7 likes

Source: Joan Didion (2013). “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, p.157, Zola Books

About the author

Joan Didion

Author, Essayist

Joan Didion was an influential American writer known for her incisive essays and novels that explore themes of memory, identity, and societal change.

All quotes by Joan Didion →

Same author

More quotes by Joan Didion

See all →