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
stories whole
We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.
dream real mean
And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.
brave scared belief
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.
rain light neon
After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.
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.