Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson
Denis Hale Johnsonis an American writer best known for his short story collection Jesus' Sonand his novel Tree of Smoke, which won the National Book Award for Fiction. He also writes plays, poetry and non-fiction...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth1 July 1949
CountryGermany
childhood life-is immortality
This life is but the childhood of our immortality.
memories mistake suffering
Memories assailed him of how gently she had spoken, touched, and moved; of how she'd loved him fiercely despite his mistakes and obsessions and weaknesses. And the conviction descended on him that love like theirs couldn't possibly suffer any change.
hell purgatory
We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.
ocean writing boat
I really enjoy writing novels. Its like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.
mother jesus hurt
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.
beautiful secret layers
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.
queens moving light
All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking—the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world.
lying doctors fool
Its always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.
rainbow english-words empty
English words are like prisms. Empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows.
rain light neon
After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.
kindness believe heart
Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.
mother husband leaving
I'll never forget you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.
fall wife alcohol
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.
lying play desire
If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having.