Quotes from Denis Johnson

If he died now, Grainier probably wouldn't know it until they came into the light of the gas lamps either side of the doctor's house. After they'd moved along for nearly an hour without conversation, listening only to the creaking wagon and the sound of the nearby river and the clop of the mares, it grew dark.

Oh, well," Sands said, thinking that when passion stirred Major Eddie's heart, he tended to speak in a kind of poetry—you wouldn't do it justice to call it lying.

I know there are people who believe that wherever you look, all you see is yourself. Episodes like this make me wonder it they aren't right. Dirty Wedding

Sooner or later the mind grasps at a thought and follows it into the labyrinth, one thought branching into another. Then the labyrinth caves in on itself and you find yourself outside. You were never inside—it was a dream.

he'd revised his thinking as to reincarnation and now believed the concept to be solely metaphorical, "just another word game, even if the saints and Buddhas are playing it," and who was I to argue about things like reincarnation? My own treatment of the matter went no farther than to pray it was a fiction, this single current addled existence of mine being vastly more than enough.

There were stories that the tunnels went for miles. There were monsters down there, blind reptiles and insects that had never seen the light, there were hospitals and brothels, and horrible things, piles of the offal from VC atrocities, dead babies, assassinated priests.

He saw no sign of their Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Granier that here had come a fire stronger than God.

Upon Waking at the far edge of earth, night is going away. another poem begins. slumped over the typewriter i must get this exactly, i want to make it clear this morning that your face, as it opens from its shadow, is more perfect than yesterday; and that the light, as it hesitates over the approach of your smile, has given this aching bed more than warmth, more than poems; someway a generous rose, or a very delicate arrangement of sounds, has come to peace in this new room.

He thought he might as well. There's really only one question. What's that? Did God really kill Himself? Leanna wasn't smiling now. She was staring at him, but softly. Who are you? she asked him. Whatever she meant by the question, he didn't want to answer it. He wiped his face with his napkin, and in reference to the warmth of the place said, Man.

I didn't want to get to know her very well, and didn't want to be bridging any silences with our eyes.

I note that I've lived longer in the past, now, than I can expect to live in the future. I have more to remember than I have to look forward to. Memory fades, not much of the past stays, and I wouldn't mind forgetting a lot more of it.

Everything they did was a secret, especially from each other.

Psy Ops is all about unusual thinking, man. We want ideas blown up right to where they're gonna pop. We're on the cutting edge of reality itself. Right where it turns into a dream.

We stared at him and felt like old maids. He, on the other hand, was the bride of Death.

The woman hurt me. She looked so soft and perfect, like a mannequin made of flesh, flesh all the way through.

I answered instantly, pointing out that in order to accept this proof that Elvis was in Paradise in 1958, we first have to accept life after death, Paradise, ghosts, all of that. Mark answered a couple of days later, I smile and shrug. Life after death, ghosts, Paradise, eternity—of course, we take all that as granted. Otherwise where's the fun?

the downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts.

Generally the closest I ever came to wondering about the meaning of it all was to consider that I must be the victim of a joke.

The cards were scattered on the table, face up, face down, and they seemed to foretell that whatever we did to one another would be washed away by liquor or explained away by sad songs.

Sloth kept him in bed awhile. Restlessness drove him downstairs to the tiny court behind his kitchen, where the sun made more mist. Under its warmth everything gave off ghosts. They work from the bricks, rose with a deep reluctance, disappeared.

The Vine had no jukebox, but a real stereo continually playing tunes of alcoholic self-pity and sentimental divorce.

the gusts of snow twisted themselves around our heads while the night fell.

The lines of her tears sparkled on her cheeks. I am a prisoner here, she said. I took the chair across from her and watched her cry. I sat upright, one hand on the table's surface and the other around my drink. I felt the ecstasy of a dancer, but I kept still.

It wasn't my life she was after, it was more. She wanted to eat my heart, and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.