6 Quotes by Bret Anthony Johnston

The past was a bridge that looked solid and sturdy, but once you were on it, you saw that it extended only far enough to strand you, to suspend you between loss and longing with nowhere to go at all.

Stories aren’t about things. Stories are things. Stories aren’t about actions. Stories are, unto themselves, actions.

The very act of committing an experience to the page is necessarily an act of reduction, and regardless of craft or skill, vision or voice, the result is a story beholden to and inevitably eclipsed by source material.

Like skateboarders, writers live by rejection; like writers, any skater worth his salt must have the single-minded tenacity of a wiener dog.

Stories aren’t about things. Stories are things.

Really, once the worst happens, it’s always happening. It’s never not happening.