“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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“I knew every raindrop by its name.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“We’d torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“There was a part of her she hadn’t yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“I’d been staying at the Holiday Inn with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I’d even known, for three days under a phony name, shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“[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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you eve know the difference?”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“I wandered over across the hall where they were showing a short movie about vasectomies. Much later I told her that I'd actually gotten a vasectomy a long time ago, and somebody else must have gotten her pregnant. I also told her once that I had inoperable cancer and would soon be passed away and gone, eternally. But nothing I could think up, no matter how dramatic or horrible, ever made her repent or love me the way she had at first, before she really knew me.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Its always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“There's so much goop inside of us, man," he said, "and it all just wants to get out.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Does everything you touch turn to shit? Does this happen to you every time?"
"No wonder they call me Fuckhead."
It's a name that's going to stick.
”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“That world! These days it's all been erased and they've rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“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 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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Sometimes I heard voices muttering in my head, and a lot of the time the world seemed to smolder around its edges. but I was in a little better physical shape every day, I was getting my looks back, and my spirits were rising, and this was all in all a happy time for me. All these weirdos, and me getting a little better right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered its mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar. And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you expect to frighten me?”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“The first time I didn’t say anything, because she shot me in the mouth.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“The Vine had no jukebox, but a real stereo continually playing tunes of alcoholic self-pity and sentimental divorce "Nurse," I sobbed. She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring. " You have a lovely pitching arm." You had to go down on them like a hummingbird over a blossom. I saw her much later, not too many years ago, and when I smiled she seemed to believe I was making advances. But it was only that I remembered. I'll never forgot you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Talk into here. Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
“Or maybe that wasn't the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn't matter. What's important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren't a problem yet, or they'd already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how a slave might become a friend to his master.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson
Born place: in Munich, Germany
Born date July 1, 1949
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“I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.'
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name”
― André Aciman, quote from Call Me by Your Name
“When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world.”
― Natsuo Kirino, quote from Out
“You heard Prince Perfect," Mal said, and joined us at the table. Nikolai grinned. "I've had a lot of nicknames, but that one is easily the most accurate.”
― Leigh Bardugo, quote from Siege and Storm
“Learning was of two kinds: the one being the things we learned and knew, and the other being the training that taught us how to find out what we did not know?”
― George S. Clason, quote from The Richest Man in Babylon
“Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view--and feel exalted--and your eyes are full of happy tears--and you want to sing--and wish you had wings! And then--you can't stay there, but must continue your journey--you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten.”
― Lloyd C. Douglas, quote from The Robe
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Into This River I Dr...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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