“We Vietnamese have two philosophies to sustain us. The Confucian tells us how to behave when fate grants us peace and order. The Buddhist trains us to accept our fate even when it brings us blood and chaos.” — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“You’ve never felt good. Your suffering protects you. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free.” — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“He had laid his head back until his scalp had contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“Everything is arranged," John Robertson told me. Thank God." I forgot to mention that we appear to have one small problem," he said. Okay..."… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
Before this moment I'd lived as a mind. Body, heart, soul, intellect, so we care ourselves into parts. But the whole of us, what… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn't going to come. That's… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
I’d been staying at the Holiday Inn with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I’d even known, for three days under a phony… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“All of this while I left lifted by a strange new medium, a strange element--I now tell you that I was newly buoyant in… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“He didn’t know what country he was in, but he was at home in the universe.” — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“There's a dizzying thrill in a philosophy that can only be tested by suicide.” — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off. — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“Who said it? – probably Confucius – “I can’t beat a sculpture from a stone with a sledgehammer; I can’t free the soul of… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
“A bus came. I climbed aboard and sat on the plastic seat while the things of our city turned in the windows like the… — Denis Johnson Copy Share Image
