238 Quotes by Denis Johnson

He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn’t going to come. That’s it. That’s the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.

Around these strange people I felt hungry. I smelled some kind of debauchery, the whiff of a potion that would banish everything plaguing me.

Since Marco Polo, he thought, this climate has defeated Western civilization.

But often, thereafter, when Grainier heard the wolves at dusk, he laid his head back and howled for all he was worth, because it did him good. It flushed out something heavy that tended to collect in his heart, and after an evening’s program with his choir of British Columbian wolves he felt warm and buoyant.

I have one ship and they call me a pirate. You have a fleet and they call you an Emperor. I can’t remember who said it.

What a pair of lungs!

It seemed the two held forth on parallel tracks, confident of meeting somewhere in infinity.

Well,” I said, “if the saints think reincarnation’s a game worth playing... ” Mark said: “I mean, sure, something’s happening over and over, but what? Maybe it’s just the breath in and out of our lungs.” I pointed out we didn’t need a metaphor for breathing – “You just talked about it quite literally.

There’s been a lie told. I’ve told it. I’m going to let the truth reclaim me. If I can’t survive that process, so be it.