Denis Johnson Quotes

When I’m writing for Esquire, my conscious thought is, I’m not writing for American Scholar.

What’s funny about Jesus’ Son is that I never even wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say, You should write these things down.

In the plays – that’s where I go crazy. But my prose has a much lighter touch; it’s not trying to thrill with language, just to be more truthful. I’m not concerned with the accuracy of anything. We don’t get to the truth of anything with facts.

If you write fiction, you’re by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don’t have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you’re not lonely anymore.

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you’ll end up with some truth – not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That’s what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we’re having.