Denis Johnson Quotes

My sister used to say I had a frail chest and she 'd beat me up all the time.

You think about child abuse and you think of a father viciously attacking a daughter or a son, but in my family it was my mother. My mother, I would say, was a... very brutal disciplinarian.

I just broke up all the furniture in the house. My mother had to get rid of me. So she put me in dance class.

My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snap backward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.

Even after the age of 50 it was impossible for me to see my mother as a human being. I felt she was a monster, and she had subtly been influencing my behavior and my thoughts and my dreams for so long that she was kind of a monster; she was a demon. And when I brought her back to life, I could feel that malevolent presence around me again, that woman who was totally incapable of giving nurturing to anybody, and, you know, her selfishness and her withdrawn indifference to everything but her own needs.

I look for women I know are gonna bust me up good. Come on, man, who can resist that? Who can resist that emotional pain? Yeah, they all have the same line, they're so sweet: I'm not gonna hurt you like all the others. Really I'm not. I'm gonna introduce you to a whole new level of pain!

I've made love to my mother, killed my father, and my brother. What am I to do?

My mom beat me up," I informed my reflection. It looked back sympathetically.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.

I told myself that if I didn't care, this wouldn't have hurt so much - surely that proved I was alive and human and all those touchy-feely things, for once and for all. But that wasn't a relief, not when I felt like a skyscraper with dynamite on every floor.

I cannot be with someone who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on me, someone who can't love me

We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent-see, he's jealous, he cares-a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure; how suicidal she's prepared to be.

People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse—anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation—is far worse and much harder to survive.

I wanted to kill her and make her eat her fringe. And her knickers.

I am scared of my father to this day. My father walked in the room - and God knows I am telling the truth - I have fainted in his presence many times. I have fainted once to be honest. I have thrown up in his presence because when he comes in the room and this aura comes and my stomach starts hurting and I know I am in trouble.

It's a TV show. Only the emotional damage is real.

It is the most vicious of all crimes - to be abused by someone you had a relationship with! Because then you blame yourself.

I won’t snatch, harm, or scare to death people with you or use checking up on you as an excuse to cause trouble. You’re worse than my mother, Rachel.” “Mine, too,” Jenks muttered.

Broken hearts are for assholes, are you an asshole?

Would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections.

He could not understand why he had needed so many words to explain what he felt in war because one was enough: fear. ~Jose Aracadio Segundo Buendia After the second banana slaughter

When you're hurt very badly in your childhood, the area that it has the greatest effect on is relationships. Once you feel like you can't trust people, once you feel like that they don't care about you, that they're really not going to take care of you, it gets very difficult in relationships.

And stop doing that,” he said. “Backing away, giving me that look.” Like you’re scaring me? Maybe you are.” He stepped back so fast he wobbled and caught himself, and the look on his face—It vanished in a second, the scowl returning. I’d never hurt you, Chloe. You should know—” He stopped. Paused. Then wheeled and started walking away. “Next time? Handle it yourself. I’m done taking care of you.

My chest hurts...It hurts. The sound of his name is like a knife in my heart.