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
expectations pressure facts
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.
play important firsts
All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.
happy-times voice people
Sometimes I heard voices muttering in my head, and a lot of the time the world seemed to smolder around its edges. but I was in a little better physical shape every day, I was getting my looks back, and my spirits were rising, and this was all in all a happy time for me. All these weirdos, and me getting a little better 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.
stories whole
We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.
mean sides grows
Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.
heart soul mind
Before this moment I'd lived as a mind. Body, heart, soul, intellect, so we care ourselves into parts. But the whole of us, what can it be?
war tree might
It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.
heart steps broke
With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.
heart torn chests
We’d torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that
hate teaching two
I hate two kinds of sentences you hear in workshops, the ones beginning "I really like ..." and the ones beginning "My problem with this poem is ..."
came hit job met money ran seven work
I'd met a woman and I got married, but the money ran out right away. I hadn't had a job for seven months, and it just came over me that I was never going to work again. It hit me.