Joyce Johnson Quotes

• I'd learned myself by the age of sixteen that just as girls guarded their virginity, boys guarded something less tangible which they called Themselves.

  Joyce Johnson

  Girl, Boys, Age

  Joyce Johnson (1999). “Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir”, p.58, Penguin

  48 Copy quote

• Everyone knew in the 1950s why a girl from a nice family left home. The meaning of her theft of herself from her parents was clear to all - as well as what she'd be up to in that room of her own.

  Joyce Johnson

  Girl, Nice, Home

  Joyce Johnson (1999). “Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir”, p.86, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• We tend to make up the people we fall in love with

  Joyce Johnson

  Falling In Love, Fall, People

  Joyce Johnson (2014). “Bad Connections: A Novel”, p.34, Open Road Media

  6 Copy quote

• media saturation is probably very destructive to art. New movements get overexposed and exhausted before they have a chance to grow, and they turn to ashes in a short time. Some degree of time and obscurity is often very necessary to artists.

  Joyce Johnson

  Art, Media, Degrees

  9 Copy quote

• Nothing ever happened except God.

  Joyce Johnson

  Happened

  Joyce Johnson (1990). “Minor Characters”, Washington Square Pr

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• If time were like a passage of music, you could keep going back to it until you got it right.

  Joyce Johnson

  Passages, Ifs, Keep Going

  Joyce Johnson (1999). “Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir”, p.186, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Rebels defy the rules of society, risking everything to retain their humanity. If the world Atwood depicts is chilling, if 'God is losing,' the only hope for optimism is a vision that includes the inevitability of human struggle against the prevailing order.

  Joyce Johnson

  Struggle, Order, Optimism

  6 Copy quote

• We derive a lot of the reality of ourselves through interactions with others.

  Joyce Johnson

  Reality

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Legend adheres to artists whose deaths seem the corollaries of their works.

  Joyce Johnson

  Artist, Legends, Seems

  Joyce Johnson (1999). “Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir”, p.123, Penguin

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• What if you lived your entire life completely without urgency? You went to classes, you ate your meals, on Saturday nights a boy you didn't love took you to the movies; now and then you actually had a conversation with someone. The rest of the time -the hours that weren't accounted for-you spent waiting for something to happen to you; when you were particularly desperate, you went out looking for it.

  Joyce Johnson

  Boys, Night, Class

  Joyce Johnson (2014). “Come and Join the Dance: A Novel”, p.11, Open Road Media

  6 Copy quote

• I believe in the curative powers of love as the English believe in tea or Catholics believe in the Miracle of Lourdes.

  Joyce Johnson

  Believe, Miracle, Catholic

  Joyce Johnson (1990). “Minor Characters”, Washington Square Pr

  11 Copy quote

• A lot of artists don't survive, do they? You work very hard and finally you get what you want and it destroys you.

  Joyce Johnson

  Artist, Hey You

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Jack Kerouac seems to have been preoccupied with the question of duality from a very young age. He seemed to feel that there was more than one person inside him. Indeed he would veer from friendly, open and so on to someone who was angry. In a way, there was a swing also between his American self and what he later called his Franco-American older brother. There was a swing between the deeply introverted part of himself and the person he became out in the world, having to act in an extroverted way.

  Joyce Johnson

  Brother, Age, Friendly

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Sacrificing everything for one's craft is something some people can't help. They can't help themselves. They must do it. They're driven to do it.

  Joyce Johnson

  Sacrifice, People, Helping

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you want to do creative work, there are tremendous sacrifices involved, and tremendous financial sacrifices too. It requires dedication and solitude.

  Joyce Johnson

  Sacrifice, Dedication, Creative

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Fame and success put tremendous demands on people. It robs them of their necessary privacy and anonymity. That's hard for even healthy people to deal with.

  Joyce Johnson

  People, Healthy, Privacy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think even celebrities deserve their privacy. I really do. It's sort of a hideous spectacle, the public feeding on all this information.

  Joyce Johnson

  Thinking, Privacy, Deserve

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think art, the discipline of creating, really does require tremendous solitude. But the whole creative process can seal your life to such an extent that while you're creating, you feel very self-sufficient. I've certainly experienced that.

  Joyce Johnson

  Art, Thinking, Discipline

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Jack Kerouac did what he most wanted to do. He wrote great prose. He became the writer he wanted to be.

  Joyce Johnson

  Prose

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I was always aware that Jack loved women not only for their bodies but for the stories that came into being as they interacted with him-they were part of his “road,” the infinite range of experience that always had to remain open to fuel his work.

  Joyce Johnson

  Stories, Fuel, Body

  4 Copy quote

• I became intent on saving him through showing him that he was loved.

  Joyce Johnson

  Saving

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