Denis Johnson Quotes

I was a geek who thought I was cool. I didn't hang out with a particular clique, but with different people from different cliques. I was a total nerd, trying to fit in. Luckily, I found music and that was my niche. That sorta took me out of my geekdom. I was never invited to parties as a teenager - I turned up with the popular people. That's where the lyrics to 'Guilty By Association' came from.

I've been embraced by a new community. That's what happens when you're finally honest about who you are; you find others like you.

He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.

This is really America in therapy, people trying to get themselves together and be whole.

I want to 'normalise' myself. I would love to have a family.

Most of my life I didn't feel very normal. There's definitely been some moments where I feel like, all right, I've finally graduated and I'm a normal lady.

It's neat to have finally reached a point where I can accept what I was and what I am.

I spent my life figuring out ways to make the room OK with me.

I think the reason why people loved 'Jem' in the '80s was because it kind of gave them this story of a place to fit in. It's about finding your place.

As many of you know, my story begins where most people's in the LGBT+ community begins... with fear. I knew I was different from my peers, my friends, and those around me when I started to discover who I was and who I identified as from a young age.

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.

I want to try to not be the child that had to go through too much too young. I want to be who I am now and not who I was then.

I think, irrespective of your race, everybody has moments in life where they don't fit in, or where they try to puzzle through who they really are or to find the courage of their convictions.

I sort of refuse to be an outsider, even though I know that I very much look like one to a lot of people, and I refuse to view myself in such terms.

I've seen optimism because I grew up in communities of recovery where people put their lives back together and find tomorrows that they didn't think would be there. That fundamentally changed my life and is so much of where my hope comes from.

I can only be the best version of myself and understand that the only way that we as a people can heal is to understand that the next person's journey may not be your own, but it doesn't mean that you have to marginalize them in any way.

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

Black Rock gives us all a chance to heal, to become ourselves.

You can run, run, run away from a lot of things in life, but you can't run away from yourself. And the key to happiness is to understand and accept who you are.

I want kids to know that it is okay to make a change in order to feel better about themselves.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

I really believe that the more distractions and fixes I remove from my life, the better I'll feel about myself. The biggest of those is Depeche Mode. It's the one marriage that survived, but I'm not sure it works - for me, anyway. Jumping on a plane to go somewhere else and be told how wonderful I am doesn't feel good any more.

I watched a million coming-out videos, and that was kind of how I accepted it myself.

In novels, and American novels in particular, it's not just about redemption, it's about forward movement and healing oneself. Americans are very big on getting better.

I don't think we have a right to enjoy our neuroses; in fact, I believe that we have a duty not to. But we cannot walk away from ourselves. Who else is there to become?