238 Quotes by Denis Johnson

But come to California. Come to these canyons if you want to be driven by sacredness into the air. If you dream of the true, clear silences, if you want those silences to sing – come to California.

I knew him, this John Smith. Once at a party he tried to sell me a gun, and later at the same party he made everyone quiet down for a few minutes because I was singing along with the radio, and he liked my voice.

Well, you were sad about the kids for a while, for a month, two months, three months. You’re sad about the kids, sad about the animals, you don’t do the women, you don’t kill the animals, but after that you realize this is a war zone and everybody here lives in it. You don’t care whether these people live or die tomorrow, you don’t care whether you yourself live or die tomorrow, you kick the children aside, you do the women, you shoot the animals.

Gladys had seen all of this, and she made it his to know. She’d lost her future to death, and lost her child to life.

I know they argue about whether or not it’s right, whether or not the baby is alive at this point or that point in its growth inside the womb. This wasn’t about that. It wasn’t what the lawyers did. It wasn’t what the doctors did, it wasn’t what the woman did. It was what the mother and father did together.

Glaciers had crushed this region in the time before history. There’d been a drought for years, and a bronze fog of dust stood over the plains. The soybean crop was dead again, and the failed, wilted cornstalks were laid out on the ground like rows of underthings. Most of the farmers didn’t even plant anymore. All the false visions had been erased. It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a long time.

People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen.

He’d come to war to see abstractions become realities. Instead he’d seen the reverse. Everything was abstract now.

Is that why I went wild over her? Because once I saw her truly? Is devotion as simple as that?