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
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.
jesus book writing
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.
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.
writing publish
Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.
voice double-vision firsts
I was probably 35 when I wrote the first story. The voice is kind of a mix in that it has a young voice, but it's also someone who's looking back. I like that kind of double vision.
thinking yesterday feelings
There were many moments in the Vine like that one--where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.
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.
The movie's not over till everybody's dead.
reality alive abyss
The abyss is full of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the abyss is alive.
lonely loneliness writing
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.
knives doctors drug
[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.
dark opportunity lasts
He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn't going to come. That's it. That's the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.
beauty mother
Death is the mother of beauty.
yes-i-can world these-days
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?