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12 quotes by Denis Johnson

Denis Hale Johnson (born July 1, 1949) is an American writer best known for his short story collection Jesus' Son (1992) and his novel Tree of Smoke (2007), which won the National Book Award for Fiction. He also writes plays, poetry and non-fiction.
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I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

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I was probably 35 when I wrote the first story. The voice is kind of a mix in that it has a young voice, but it's also someone who's looking... →

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If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But... →

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I didn't finish the stories until we went to the Philippines and I got malaria. I couldn't work and I didn't have any money, but I had... →

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You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints;... →

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I think it's silly for anyone to think you could write under the influence, but if they'd like to think that, I'd like to keep the legend... →

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In the plays - that's where I go crazy. But my prose has a much lighter touch; it's not trying to thrill with language, just to be more... →

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All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.

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When I'm writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I'm not writing for American Scholar.

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I'd met a woman and I got married, but the money ran out right away. I hadn't had a job for seven months, and it just came over me that I was... →

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If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth.... →

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What's funny about Jesus' Son is that I never even wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say... →

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