Denis Johnson Quotes

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Our job is not to set things right but to see them right.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

Whoever said love is blind is dead wrong. Love is the only thing that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.

One of the main reasons I write fiction is to try to understand what life is like for people other than myself, to try to see the world through my characters' eyes. I often find that I'm able to understand certain emotional truths about my own life by exploring things from different vantages.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

From inside where I live, I feel like I just perceive events in a certain rational way. I often find it sad or poignant, and it may not make me laugh a bit. But I don't mind inventing a portrait that allows others to laugh if that's what they want to do.

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

When you write, you take the ball and you hold it up to the light and you turn it slowly, and let people draw their own conclusions. And try to bring empathy to all sides of the equation.

Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.

Because I'm highly empathetic, it's easy for me to put myself in the character's shoes. It's, you know, finding the truth of the moment.

I think film cannot only teleport you to places you don't know, but it can help you see people you thought were one way and in fact are another. They can allow us to examine ourselves.

The unique thing that literature provides is to be able to step so fully into another situation and condition.

You know so much about me and yet you don't understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything.

i can't understand her" well son, you might as well try to understand the sun". derived form the book:fires of heaven by robert jordan.

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.

Just because you did not understand us, it did not mean we were wrong.

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

Were one merely to seek information, one should inquire of the man who hates, but if one wishes to know what truly is, one better ask the one who loves.

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.

I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.