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f52a49f
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I knew every raindrop by its name.
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Denis Johnson |
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a646f7b
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And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.
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Denis Johnson |
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08176f0
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Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.
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Denis Johnson |
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f5066aa
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Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.
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lies
god
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Denis Johnson |
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aec8c44
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All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.
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Denis Johnson |
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e6f6a9b
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With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.
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Denis Johnson |
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2ad869a
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She had nothing in this world but her two hands and her crazy love for Jesus, who seemed, for his part, never to have heard of her.
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Denis Johnson |
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46b7114
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I make the road. I draw the map. Nothing just happens to me...I'm the one happening.
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Denis Johnson |
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d1f0deb
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We'd torn open our chests and shown our cowardly hearts, and you can never stay friends after something like that
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Denis Johnson |
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695a273
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Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.
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Denis Johnson |
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ace026b
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And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
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Denis Johnson |
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4aba184
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There was a part of her she hadn't yet allowed to be born because it was too beautiful for this place
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Denis Johnson |
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97fa05a
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The traveling salesmen fed me pills that made the lining of my veins feel scraped out, my jaw ached... I knew every raindrop by its name, I sensed everything before it happened. Like I knew a certain oldsmobile would stop even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside, I knew we'd have an accident in the rain. I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.
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Denis Johnson |
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a5f4a12
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Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you eve know the difference?" --
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Denis Johnson |
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d0aaf85
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Everybody's got a mean side. Just don't feed it till it grows.
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Denis Johnson |
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0fd3176
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The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk - that is, me - standing next to the orderly, Georgie, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face. 'What seems to be the trouble?' he asked.
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Denis Johnson |
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bbde65b
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How could I do it, how could a person go that low? And I understand your question, to which I reply, Are you kidding? That's nothing. I'd been much lower than that. And I expected to see myself do worse.
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Denis Johnson |
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cf44f73
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It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.
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Denis Johnson |
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ca0e944
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There's so much goop inside of us, man," he said, "and it all just wants to get out."
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Denis Johnson |
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0784fb3
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Its always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.
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Denis Johnson |
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8df8213
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Once upon a time there was a war...and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That's me.
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Denis Johnson |
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2187133
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I wandered over across the hall where they were showing a short movie about vasectomies. Much later I told her that I'd actually gotten a vasectomy a long time ago, and somebody else must have gotten her pregnant. I also told her once that I had inoperable cancer and would soon be passed away and gone, eternally. But nothing I could think up, no matter how dramatic or horrible, ever made her repent or love me the way she had at first, befor..
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Denis Johnson |
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ba86340
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This life is but the childhood of our immortality.
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Denis Johnson |
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fc0f3d1
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That world! These days it's all been erased and they've rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?
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Denis Johnson |
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13833aa
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Does everything you touch turn to shit? Does this happen to you every time?" "No wonder they call me Fuckhead." It's a name that's going to stick. "
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Denis Johnson |
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650fa34
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I have the belief in boldness. What I generally lack is the boldness itself. Because boldness doesn't feel bold. It feels scared not brave.
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Denis Johnson |
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2379b08
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Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid?
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Denis Johnson |
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e3172ec
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Sometimes I heard voices muttering in my head, and a lot of the time the world seemed to smolder around its edges. but I was in a little better physical shape every day, I was getting my looks back, and my spirits were rising, and this was all in all a happy time for me. All these weirdos, and me getting a little better right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people..
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Denis Johnson |
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1a75dab
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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 it. That's the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being.
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Denis Johnson |
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c4b1dd5
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When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. 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.
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jesus
denis
johnson
wedding
dirty
son
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Denis Johnson |
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058b43f
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All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he'd ever witnessed waking--the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving thro..
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Denis Johnson |
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4ed95a4
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But they hushed, all at once and quite abruptly, when he stood still at center stage, his arms straight out from his shoulders, and went rigid, and began to tremble with a massive inner dynamism. Nobody present had ever seen anyone stand so still and yet so strangely mobile. He laid his head back until his scalp contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four dir..
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Denis Johnson |
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8088b99
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Or maybe that wasn't the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn't matter. What's important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren't a problem yet, or they'd already been..
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Denis Johnson |
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43b22a3
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He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.
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Denis Johnson |
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1c65ebd
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The first kiss plummeted him down a hole and popped him out into a world he thought he could get along in--as if he'd been pulling hard the wrong way and was now turned around headed downstream.
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Denis Johnson |
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16f956a
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Through this feeling of helplessness suddenly burst a piercing nostalgia for the lost world of childhood. The way it came right up against the heart, that world, and against the face. No indoors or outdoors, only everything touching us, and the grown-ups lumbering past overhead like constellations.
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Denis Johnson |
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d6b7db4
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A bus came. I climbed aboard and sat on the plastic seat while the things of our city turned in the windows like the images in a slot machine.
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Denis Johnson |
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edea4f1
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And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.
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Denis Johnson |
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8f90cac
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They needed to share one secret after another with a beautiful woman, to peel away layer after layer, mask after mask, and still find themselves worshiped.
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Denis Johnson |
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3775a94
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We parked under a strange sky with a faint image of a quarter-moon superimposed on it. There was a little woods beside us. This day had been dry out and hot, the buck pines and what-all simmering patientyl, but as we sat there smoking cigarettes it started to get very cold. "The summer's over," I said."
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Denis Johnson |
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95f585a
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People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered its mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar. And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you ex..
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Denis Johnson |
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8bef7c7
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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.
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Denis Johnson |
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7c6d401
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The Vine had no jukebox, but a real stereo continually playing tunes of alcoholic self-pity and sentimental divorce "Nurse," I sobbed. She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring. " You have a lovely pitching arm." You had to go down on them like a hummingbird over a blossom. I saw her much later, not too many years ago, and when I smiled she seemed to believe I was making advances. But it was onl..
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Denis Johnson |
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890066a
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I'd thought something was required of me, but I hadn't wanted to find out what it was.
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Denis Johnson |