Denis Johnson Quotes

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be.

I didnt like being reminded about how self-absorbed i was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didnt want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasnt trying to weasel out of anything. I just wasnt in the mood of being on the earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when i see certain sad movies.

I want to be able, as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye.

When you're in that scene, you really wonder if this is all you're ever going to be. You know how vile and filthy you are inside.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

It is difficult to write about any form of mental disease, especially your own, without sounding as if you were examining a bug under glass.

There must have been something in my nature - I believe, with all my heart, that I have conquered it now - which prevented me from being perfectly happy or making a woman perfectly happy.

It's tough being me.

The trouble that they see me in is a part of my life that I'm working on.

For me, growing up, I felt like there was something fatally and tragically flawed in my nature and that it was my duty to try to avoid falling for that vice.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

People tell me they idolise me, want to be like me, but I tell them, 'trust me, you don't want my life.' I've been a very tortured soul.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

I'm surprised that I've survived my own dysfunction, really.

Everybody has a story... and a scream.

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.

It's really hard to watch yourself.

I find it takes a lot of strength to endure myself.

Life's most underrated emotion is self-pity.

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong. I don't know how to explain it more. It's universal. Some people are better at dealing with it, and they sleep with no pain - not pain, arguments. I've grown quite comfortable with being at war.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

I came up with the album name 'Please Don't Be Dead' because I felt like we'd lost our way as a society - and I know what happens when you chase the wrong things. It's the story of my life.

Your art is most alive and dangerous when you use it against yourself. That's why I pick at my scabs.

People say nice things about me but they don't know what's been going on between my ears.