Quotes from Tree of Smoke

“She had nothing in this world but her two hands and her crazy love for Jesus, who seemed, for his part, never to have heard of her.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Once upon a time there was a war...and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That's me.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“This life is but the childhood of our immortality.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid?”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Who said it? – probably Confucius – “I can’t beat a sculpture from a stone with a sledgehammer; I can’t free the soul of man by violence.” Peace was here, peace was now. Peace promised in any other time or place was a lie.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn’t it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don’t we, and we constantly invoke our God. It’s got to be about something bigger than dying, or we’d all turn deserter.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“If illness didn’t kill you, you died of bad luck.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“At the sight of the flag he tasted tears in his throat. In the Stars and Stripes all the passions of his life coalesced to produce the ache with which he loved the United States of America - with which he loved the dirty, plain, honest faces of GIs in the photographs of World War Two, with which he loved the sheets of rain rippling across the green playing field toward the end of the school year, with which he cherished the sense-memories of the summers in his childhood, the many Kansas summers, running the bases, falling harmlessly onto the grass, his head beating with heat, the stunned streets of breezeless afternoons, the thick, palpable shade of colossal elms, the muttering of radios beyond the windowsills, the whirring of redwing blackbirds, the sadness of the grown-ups at their incomprehensible pursuits, the voices carrying over the yards in the dusks that fell later and later, the trains moving through town into the sky. His love for his country, his homeland, was a love for the United States of America in the summertime. ”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“WE'RE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF REALITY ITSELF. RIGHT WHERE IT TURNS INTO A DREAM”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“The scene before her flattened, lost one of its dimensions, and the noise dribbled irrelevantly down its face. Something was coming. This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking--someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lives, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“We live in the post-trash, man. It'll be a real short eon. Down in the ectoplasmic circuitry where humanity's leaders are all linked up unconsciously with each other and with the masses, man, there's been this unanimous worldwide decision to trash the planet and get on to a new one.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“The Americans won't win. They're not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“THE PEOPLE'S THIRST FOR FREEDOM HAS DRIVEN US TO DRINK BAD WATER.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“The movie’s not over till everybody’s dead.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking - someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lies, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn’t it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don’t we, and we constantly invoke our God. It’s got to be about something bigger than dying, or we’d all turn deserter. I think we need to be much more conscious of that. I think we need to be invoking the other fellow’s gods too.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“There’s been a lie told. I’ve told it. I’m going to let the truth reclaim me. If I can’t survive that process, so be it.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Well, you were sad about the kids for a while, for a month, two months, three months. You’re sad about the kids, sad about the animals, you don’t do the women, you don’t kill the animals, but after that you realize this is a war zone and everybody here lives in it. You don’t care whether these people live or die tomorrow, you don’t care whether you yourself live or die tomorrow, you kick the children aside, you do the women, you shoot the animals.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“News had reached his ears that they planned to distribute mixtures alongside Route One and Route Twenty-two to kill the vegetation there. Depriving ambushers of cover was a good idea, he thought. But this was the loveliest country on the earth. Sorrow and war lay all over it, true, but the sickness of sorrow had never before penetrated the land itself. He didn’t like to see it poisoned.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“We Vietnamese have two philosophies to sustain us. The Confucian tells us how to behave when fate grants us peace and order. The Buddhist trains us to accept our fate even when it brings us blood and chaos.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Survival is the foundation of triumph.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Now the colonel seemed to grieve for his President again, because he said, “This world spits out a beautiful man like he was poison.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“Since Marco Polo, he thought, this climate has defeated Western civilization.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“The coyotes sounded like hurt dogs. They agitated plainly for Christ's return. May they not be heard.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“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.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

“You know there is a cycle of imagining and desire, desire and death, death and birth, birth and imagining. And we have been tempted into its mouth. And it has swallowed us.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Tree of Smoke

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