Denis Johnson Quotes

I had no idea how complicated and solitary it could be to write a simple book.

Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.

It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.

There may be writing groups where people meet but it's occasional. You really do it all at your own computer or your own typewriter by yourself.

You're on your own with the book. And while you are writing fiction, you're spending all this time with people who don't actually exist, which is just madness.

I think, as a writer, you spend most of your time working on the book alone.

You never meet other screenwriters because it's such a lonely profession.

There's no path to being a writer that's applicable to everyone. Some young writers have the fortitude to work in a vacuum. For me, it was important to have some sense that my failures weren't unique.

To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.

Some writers - most, I suspect - write in isolation. I think I'd always found that quite difficult.

If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.

At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.

I was reading fan fiction on Wattpad, but they were taking a little bit to update the stories, so I started writing my own stories to entertain myself. I didn't think anyone would read it.

Other writers know what you're going through, what you're talking about when you write.

I cannot write in isolation. I write with people around me.

It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.

When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

Each book is a separate entity for me. When I'm writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.

I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.'

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

In 1982, when I was almost 26 years old, I decided I wanted to write fiction. I'd majored in journalism in college, and I'd always assumed I would write nonfiction.