“ Animals had returned to what was left of the forest...clusters of orange butterflies exploded off the blackish purple piles of bear sign and winked and fluttered magically like leaves without trees. M… Denis Johnson
“ When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all -- cash, booze, and a wife -- he cou… Denis Johnson
“ When I reached the street I didn't know whether to go right or left. Soon I'd have to start acting like a person who cared about what happened to him. Denis Johnson
“ When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was a… Denis Johnson
“ He had laid his head back until his scalp had contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrify… Denis Johnson
“ After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy. Denis Johnson
“ It’s a beautiful day – by which we meant that the weather was good. But we never say, The weather’s good, The weather’s pleasant. We say, It’s a beautiful day, What a beautiful day. Denis Johnson
“ After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Ch… Denis Johnson
“ I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fal… Denis Johnson
“ All of this while I left lifted by a strange new medium, a strange element--I now tell you that I was newly buoyant in a brighter life. In the midst of a hymn, God had disappeared. It was like waking… Denis Johnson
“ Living up the Moyea with plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered. Denis Johnson
“ Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid? Denis Johnson
“ It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it. Denis Johnson
“ Harold's Bow and FoodBowl bowl bowl bowlFood food food foodThe miracle of the heavenly restaurantI mouth thisgreat dark sad eveningSuddenly they come for me in a limousineHow could I have believed I w… Denis Johnson
“ With a certain frustration I knew I spoke too soon, too urgently. I wanted to get out of the way the things I knew to say, wanted to say, the things I'd been thinking, all in the hope of moving into t… Denis Johnson
“ In this twilight they were more imagined than seen, but I felt surrounded by the practitioners of a sacred mediocrity, an elegant mediocrity cloistering inaccessible tortures. I don't know quite how t… Denis Johnson
