Quotes by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson

[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk – that is, me – standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ he asked.

Doctors

Drug

Knives

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

Firsts

Important

Play

And with each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who’d love me. And then I would remember I had a wife at home who loved me, or later that my wife had left me and I was terrirfied, or again later that I had a beautiful alcoholic girlfriend who would make me happy forever. But every time I entered the place there were veiled faces promising everything and then clarifying quickly into the dull, the usual, looking up at me and making the same mistake.

Beautiful

Girlfriend

Mistake

Death is the mother of beauty.

Beauty

Mother

Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn’t know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That’s what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I’ve gone looking for that feeling everywhere.

Doctors

Doors

Husband

English words are like prisms. Empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows.

Empty

English Words

Rainbow

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

Grows

Mean

Sides

How could I do it, how could a person go that low? And I understand your question, to which I reply, Are you kidding? That’s nothing. I’d been much lower than that. And I expected to see myself do worse.

Expected

Lows

Persons

I didnt finish the stories until we went to the Philippines and I got malaria. I couldnt work and I didnt have any money, but I had seven stories. So I wrote three or four more.

Malaria

Stories

Three

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 …”

Hate

Teaching

Two

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Abyss

Aerospace

Alive

Beautiful

Beauty

Belief

Believe

Book

Brave

Broke

Bullets

Childhood

Children

Distance

Doctors

Doors

Double Vision

Draws

Drug

Dust

Empty

English Words

Expectations

Expected

Facts

Fine

First Kiss

Firsts

Girlfriend

Grows

Happenings

Hate

Heart

Hell

Holes

Hurt

Husband

Important

Jesus

Kindness

Kissing

Knives

Leaving

Loneliness

Lonely

Lows

Malaria

Maps

Mean

Might

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson

[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk – that is, me – standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’ he asked.

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

Death is the mother of beauty.

English words are like prisms. Empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows.

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

How could I do it, how could a person go that low? And I understand your question, to which I reply, Are you kidding? That’s nothing. I’d been much lower than that. And I expected to see myself do worse.

I didnt finish the stories until we went to the Philippines and I got malaria. I couldnt work and I didnt have any money, but I had seven stories. So I wrote three or four more.

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 …”

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Topics by Denis Johnson

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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