Denis Johnson Quotes

Walking down the street in any town or city in the world and having people look at you and start talking to you, convinced that they know you as well or better than they do members of their own family, that's just an odd phenomenon. But I mean, I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It's an interesting thing.

Attraction is what happens between you. It's not universal. And it's not conventional. And thank God for that.

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.

People have known me for so long, I'm just Della to them.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

Over there, Kevin McHale, I feel like I'm talking to someone I know. It's just a total different atmosphere.

People are not recognisable, but places have to be recognisable.

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

People feel like they know me, in a strange way, like they grew up with me or they went to high school with me!

Sam Smith knew who I was!

I woke to the sound of rain.

Every cloud engenders not a storm.

Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.

Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

I try to be really, really specific, because each character is really an individual and you have to find out what makes them unique.

Every dew-drop and rain-drop had a whole heaven within it.

To me there is a name for each person. I think it’s marvelous to have a name. A woman is not a woman. It’s either Gena or my mother or some other person.

Universal love is a glove without fingers, which fits all bands alike and none closely; but true affection is like a glove with fingers, which fits one hand only, and sits close to that one.

In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.

Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity.

How do you know who I am?' Denna grinned, almost laughed. 'To know Richard is to know who Kahlan is.

If you wear a different perfume every day, I do not recognize you.