238 Quotes by Denis Johnson

I hate two kinds of sentences you hear in workshops, the ones beginning "I really like ..." and the ones beginning "My problem with this poem is ..."

What could be lonelier than trying to communicate?

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

We’d torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that

With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.

It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.

Before this moment I'd lived as a mind. Body, heart, soul, intellect, so we care ourselves into parts. But the whole of us, what can it be?

Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.

We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.