Quote

Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.

Denis Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Denis Johnson
Age: 67 †
Born: 1949
Born: July 1
Died: 2017
Died: May 24
Actor
Essayist
Film Actor
Musician
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
München
Denis Hale Johnson
Dionysius Johnson
Dennis Johnson
Publish
Write
Writing

More quotes by Denis Johnson

Image
Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.
Denis Johnson
Image
Death is the mother of beauty.
Denis Johnson
Image
That world! These days it's all been erased and they've rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?
Denis Johnson
Image
In my writing, I want to be laid bare as a human being.
Denis Johnson
Image
I have the belief in boldness. What I generally lack is the boldness itself. Because boldness doesn't feel bold. It feels scared not brave.
Denis Johnson
Image
The movie's not over till everybody's dead.
Denis Johnson
Image
And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
Denis Johnson
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Denis Johnson
Image
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
Image
We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.
Denis Johnson
Image
We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.
Denis Johnson
Image
Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.
Denis Johnson
Image
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 ...
Denis Johnson
Image
There was a part of her she hadn’t yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place
Denis Johnson
Image
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?
Denis Johnson
Image
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.
Denis Johnson
Image
Its always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.
Denis Johnson
Image
I knew every raindrop by its name.
Denis Johnson