238 Quotes by Denis Johnson

There was nothing of his I wanted in particular. I wanted it all.

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.

Her zealous hope of Heaven made it hell there.

As he expressed these ideas he followed them with his eyes, watching them gallop away to the place where they made sense.

The three of us had formed a group based on something erroneous, some basic misunderstanding that hadn’t yet come to light, and so we kept on in one another’s company, going to bars and having conversations.

All the modern verse plays, they’re terrible; they’re mostly about the poetry. It’s more important that the play is first.

They ran a few syringesful into me, and I felt like I’d turned from a light, Styrofoam thing into a person. I held up my hands before my eyes. The hands were as still as a sculpture’s.

She was resting at a table between numbers in the Greek nightclub where she was dancing. A little of the stage light touched her. She was very frail. She seemed to be thinking about something far away, waiting patiently for somebody to destroy her.

The women were blank, shining areas with photographs of sad girls floating in them.