Quote

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

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
Stories
Book
Wrote
Writing
Son
Even
Things
Jesus
Never
Funny
Would
Write
People
Tell

More quotes by 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
Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.
Denis Johnson
Image
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.
Denis Johnson
Image
[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.
Denis Johnson
Image
And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
Denis Johnson
Image
After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.
Denis Johnson
Image
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
Image
I knew every raindrop by its name.
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
We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.
Denis Johnson
Image
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.
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
All the modern verse plays, they're terrible they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.
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
The abyss is full of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the abyss is alive.
Denis Johnson
Image
This life is but the childhood of our immortality.
Denis Johnson
Image
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.
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
The movie's not over till everybody's dead.
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