Denis Johnson Quotes

Quotes about:

Feelings Giving Heart Jesus Lying Mothers Wife

All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.

Denis Johnson

People, Littles, Might

Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.91, Macmillan

51 Copy quote
I make the road. I draw the map. Nothing just happens to me...I'm the one happening.

Denis Johnson

Maps, Draws, Happenings

27 Copy quote
Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.

Denis Johnson

Lying, Giving, Bars

Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.25, Macmillan

32 Copy quote
The first kiss plummeted him down a hole and popped him out into a world he thought he could get along in—as if he’d been pulling hard the wrong way and was now turned around headed downstream.

Denis Johnson

Kissing, First Kiss, World

Denis Johnson (2012). “Train Dreams”, p.27, Granta Books

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What could be lonelier than trying to communicate?

Denis Johnson

Trying, Communicate

6 Copy quote
This life is but the childhood of our immortality.

Denis Johnson

Childhood, Life Is, Immortality

Denis Johnson (2016). “Tree of Smoke”, p.317, Pan Macmillan

21 Copy quote
When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all -- cash, booze, and a wife -- he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground.

Denis Johnson

Fall, Wife, Alcohol

Denis Johnson (1983). “Angels”, Knopf

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This wasn't the sea of the inexorable horizon and smashing waves, not the sea of distance and violence, but the sea of the etenally leveling patience and wetness of water. Whether it comes to you in a storm or in a cup, it owns you--we are more water than dust. It is our origin and our destination.

Denis Johnson

Distance, Dust, Sea

28 Copy quote
After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.

Denis Johnson

Rain, Light, Neon

Denis Johnson (2010). “Nobody Move: A Novel”, p.25, Macmillan

21 Copy quote
I really enjoy writing novels. Its like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

Denis Johnson

Ocean, Writing, Boat

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How could I do it, how could a person go that low? And I understand your question, to which I reply, Are you kidding? That's nothing. I'd been much lower than that. And I expected to see myself do worse.

Denis Johnson

Lows, Expected, Persons

Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.83, Macmillan

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I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.

Denis Johnson

Running, People, Interesting

32 Copy quote
Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.

Denis Johnson

Writing, Publish

6 Copy quote
Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.

Denis Johnson

Husband, Doctors, Doors

"'What a Pair of Lungs!': Denis Johnson’s Ecstatic American Voice" by Philip Gourevitch, www.newyorker.com. May 27, 2017.

22 Copy quote
We’d torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that

Denis Johnson

Heart, Torn, Chests

Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.11, Macmillan

21 Copy quote
And with each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me. And then I would remember I had a wife at home who loved me, or later that my wife had left me and I was terrirfied, or again later that I had a beautiful alcoholic girlfriend who would make me happy forever. But every time I entered the place there were veiled faces promising everything and then clarifying quickly into the dull, the usual, looking up at me and making the same mistake.

Denis Johnson

Beautiful, Girlfriend, Mistake

19 Copy quote
We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.

Denis Johnson

Stories, Whole

Denis Johnson (2016). “Tree of Smoke”, p.290, Pan Macmillan

10 Copy quote
Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.

Denis Johnson

Bullets, Holes, Fine

"Jesus' Son". www.imdb.com. 1999.

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English words are like prisms. Empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows.

Denis Johnson

Rainbow, English Words, Empty

Denis Johnson (2003). “Already Dead: A California Gothic”, p.27, Harper Collins

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I'd been staying at the Holiday Inn with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I'd ever known, for three days under a phony name, shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.

Denis Johnson

Beautiful, Girlfriend, Holiday

"Jesus' Son". Book by Denis Johnson, December 1992.

7 Copy quote
She had nothing in this world but her two hands and her crazy love for Jesus, who seemed, for his part, never to have heard of her.

Denis Johnson

Jesus, Crazy, Hands

Denis Johnson (2016). “Tree of Smoke”, p.112, Pan Macmillan

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And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.

Denis Johnson

Dream, Real, Mean

Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.9, Macmillan

14 Copy quote
When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.

Denis Johnson

Mother, Hurt, Jesus

Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.84, Macmillan

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Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.

Denis Johnson

Mean, Sides, Grows

Denis Johnson (2016). “Tree of Smoke”, p.105, Pan Macmillan

8 Copy quote
There was a part of her she hadn’t yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place

Denis Johnson

Beautiful, Born

8 Copy quote

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Born: July 1, 1949
Occupation: Writer
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