Denis Johnson Quotes

I've been waiting for someone to sign the permission slip for me to write about sex. In the meantime, I've written about sex in all my books anyway.

The only really good piece of advice I have for my students is, 'Write something you'd never show your mother or father.' And you know what they say? 'I could never do that!'

Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print.

I have a problem with censorship by the lawyer - by legal people by the publishing firm, and I may be changing publishers. They don't seem to want to take too many risks with living people.

By the end of the week, if I'm still alive, I get to write whatever I want about it all.

I've learned that I have to be happy with creating discussion and debate and that I shouldn't be trying to write a book that appeals to the consensus.

The wider your readership, the greater the chances of offending your readers.

They can't censor the gleam in my eye.

If you make comedy, if you try and make comedy where no one gets upset or offended, you're going to fail.

The publishing world is very timid. Readers are much braver.

We're the guys who, if someone says you really shouldn't do an episode making fun of Scientologists, we say, 'Whatever.' Someone says, 'They might come try to burn your house down,' we say, 'We'll just get another one.'

We don't call art filth or filth art.

I'm not afraid to take on somebody or say something that somebody will find offensive because unfortunately in comedy, you can't say anything really good without offending somebody.

When people started reading me and talking to me about the work, they didn't say how funny, or how satiric, or how brilliant, or how this or how that, they said, how'd you get away with it? How'd you get that into print?

To most women art is a form of scandal.

Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.

I love to do the things the censors won't pass.

I think art should be controversial. I think it should make people think.

If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.

I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

Rock'n'roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock'n'roll, or a movie can be rock'n'roll. It's a way of living your life.

Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions.

Religious law is like the grammar of language. Any language isgoverned by such rules; otherwise it ceases to be a language. But within them, you can say many different sentences and write many different books.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

The best thing about writing has been the writer's life, the sense of being expressed, the ownership of the day, the entirely specious sense of freedom we have, however slave we are to some boss or other. I wouldn't trade it for any other life.