“Death is the mother of beauty.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
“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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
“Memories assailed him of how gently she had spoken, touched, and moved; of how she'd loved him fiercely despite his mistakes and obsessions and weaknesses. And the conviction descended on him that love like theirs couldn't possibly suffer any change.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
“They needed to share one secret after another with a beautiful woman, to peel away layer after layer, mask after mask, and still find themselves worshiped.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
“They started calling it The Rape, and it came to stand for everything: for coming together while falling apart; for loving each other and hating everybody else; for moving at breakneck speed while getting nowhere; for freezing in the streets and melting in the rooms of love.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
“It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness he realized now that somewhere inside it there was a move he could make to change his life, to become another person, but he'd never be able to guess what it was.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
“They'd been here twenty seconds, and already nothing was happening.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Angels
Denis Johnson
Born place: in Munich, Germany
Born date July 1, 1949
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“We asked the people at the flower shop if they had seen anything, but they hadn’t. We asked every shopkeeper in the strip mall and most of the employees, but they all said no. I hoped they had seen something to indicate that Karen was safe, but deep down, where your blood runs cold, I knew they hadn’t.”
― Robert Crais, quote from L.A. Requiem
“What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as "play" is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.
Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”
― Thomas Merton, quote from New Seeds of Contemplation
“لإندثار المفاجئ للديناصورات لا يزعزع من صحة النظرية البيولوجية الخاصة بالتطور”
― Francis Fukuyama, quote from The End of History and the Last Man
“the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“The old woman’s face was wreathed in smiles.”
― Shi Nai'an, quote from Outlaws of the Marsh
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