Denis Johnson Quotes

Take destiny in your own hands.

She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

You shape your own destiny.

We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.

You can write your own history.

I like being in control of my own destiny, really.

I don't feel like my life happens to me. I feel like I happen to my life. I feel that I'm in the driver's seat.

People - and I think this is particularly true of Americans - don't like to be passive. They like to seize control.

Destiny is for losers. It's just a lame excuse for letting things happen to you instead of making them happen.

There’s a redemptive power that making a choice has rather than feeling like you’re an effect to all the things that are happening. Make a choice. Just decide what it’s gonna be, who you’re gonna be, how you are going to do it. Just decide. And from that point, the universe will get out of your way.

I'm coming to believe that there are two kinds of people... those who choose to be masters of their own fate and those who wait in chairs while other dance. I would rather be one of the former than the latter.

You want to be in the driver’s seat of your own life because if you are not, life will drive you.

We can act instead of being acted upon.

I need not wait for I have the power to choose my own destiny.

Man is the maker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny.

Circumstances hell! I make circumstances!

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.

I'm doing it because I choose it. And if it's not working, I can make a change.

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.

Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it.

I'm not saying we have power over everything in our lives - if that were true, my hair would look so, so different - but I am saying that there's no circumstance in which we are completely powerless.

We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

You shouldn't wait for other people to make special things happen. You have to create your own memories.

People ought to have more control over their lives.