List of Denis Johnson Quotes

I Think It's Silly For Anyone To Think You Could Write Under The Influence, But If They'd Like To Think That, I'd Like To Keep The Legend Alive. Maybe I Was Under The Influence When I Wrote Jesus' Son And I Just Didn't Know It.

What's Funny About Jesus' Son Is That I Never Even Wrote That Book, I Just Wrote It Down. I Would Tell These Stories And People Would Say, You Should Write These Things Down.

In My Writing, I Want To Be Laid Bare As A Human Being.

[the Doctor] Peeked Into The Trauma Room And Saw The Situation: The Clerk - That Is, Me - Standing Next To The Orderly, Georgie, Both Of Us On Drugs, Looking Down At A Patient With A Knife Sticking Up Out Of His Face. 'what Seems To Be The Trouble?' He Asked.

I Wandered Over Across The Hall Where They Were Showing A Short Movie About Vasectomies. Much Later I Told Her That I'd Actually Gotten A Vasectomy A Long Time Ago, And Somebody Else Must Have Gotten Her Pregnant. I Also Told Her Once That I Had Inoperable Cancer And Would Soon Be Passed Away And Gone, Eternally. But Nothing I Could Think Up, No Matter How Dramatic Or Horrible, Ever Made Her Repent Or Love Me The Way She Had At First, Before She Really Knew Me.

If You Write Fiction, You're By Yourself. There Are Certain Advantages To That In That You Don't Have To Explain Anything To Anybody. But When You Get In With Others Who Share The Loneliness Of The Whole Enterprise, You're Not Lonely Anymore.

I Didnt Finish The Stories Until We Went To The Philippines And I Got Malaria. I Couldnt Work And I Didnt Have Any Money, But I Had Seven Stories. So I Wrote Three Or Four More.

They Needed To Share One Secret After Another With A Beautiful Woman, To Peel Away Layer After Layer, Mask After Mask, And Still Find Themselves Worshiped.

You're Under Pressure When You Produce Facts. You're Working With Facts In Journalism, But You're Under All Kinds Of Formal Constraints; There Are Expectations.

All The Modern Verse Plays, They're Terrible; They're Mostly About The Poetry. It's More Important That The Play Is First.

Think Of Being Curled Up And Floating In A Darkness. Even If You Could Think, Even If You Had An Imagination, Would You Ever Imagine Its Opposite, This Miraculous World The Asian Taoists Call The "ten Thousand Things"? And If The Darkness Just Got Darker? And Then You Were Dead? What Would You Care? How Would You Eve Know The Difference?

Through This Feeling Of Helplessness Suddenly Burst A Piercing Nostalgia For The Lost World Of Childhood. The Way It Came Right Up Against The Heart, That World, And Against The Face. No Indoors Or Outdoors, Only Everything Touching Us, And The Grown-ups Lumbering Past Overhead Like Constellations.