238 Quotes by Denis Johnson

The water of inlets winking in the sincere light of day, under a sky as blue and brainless as the love of God.

We Vietnamese have two philosophies to sustain us. The Confucian tells us how to behave when fate grants us peace and order. The Buddhist trains us to accept our fate even when it brings us blood and chaos.

The lid, however, wouldn’t shut. The mind held back the whole sky.

The movie’s not over till everybody’s dead.

I know everything.” Heinz sputtered and fumed somewhat like an automobile himself, and said, “I’m God!” Grainier thought about how to answer. Here seemed a conversation that could go no farther.

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.

I stayed in the library, crushed breathless by the smoldering power of all those words – many of them unfathomable – until Happy Hour. And then I left.

There was a part of her she hadn’t yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place.

I was a whimpering dog inside, nothing more than that. I looked for work because people seemed to believe I should look for work, and when I found a job I believed I was happy about it because these same people – counselors and Narcotics Anonymous members and such – seemed to think a job was a happy thing.