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
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.
jesus crazy hands
She had nothing in this world but her two hands and her crazy love for Jesus, who seemed, for his part, never to have heard of her.
jesus silly writing
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.
mother jesus hurt
When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.
begin children dawn drop neighbors radios screams soon start time wind
As soon as the first drop of dawn dilutes the blackness, the neighbors begin their unbelievable racket, first the roosters, then the radios, then the live accompaniment to the radios - and then it's time to wind up the little children and start their screams and tears.
writing want humans
In my writing, I want to be laid bare as a human being.
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 ..."
trying communicate
What could be lonelier than trying to communicate?
beautiful born
There was a part of her she hadn’t yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place
heart torn chests
We’d torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that
heart steps broke
With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.
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 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?
mean sides grows
Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.