After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.
Denis JohnsonRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the difference between drama and prose, emphasizing a pursuit of truth over mere factual accuracy.
Denis Johnson distinguishes between the emotional depth of plays and the straightforwardness of prose, suggesting that prose seeks truthfulness rather than just the thrill of language. He argues that factual accuracy does not necessarily lead to a deeper understanding of truth, implying that the essence of truth may lie in the simplicity and honesty of expression rather than in the complexities of factual detail.
Themes
TruthProseLanguageAccuracyEmotions
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the essence of writing styles, one might use this quote to illustrate the role of truth in prose.
More from Denis Johnson
All quotes →This wasn't the sea of the inexorable horizon and smashing waves, not the sea of distance and violence, but the sea of the etenally leveling patience and wetness of water. Whether it comes to you in a storm or in a cup, it owns you--we are more water than dust. It is our origin and our destination.
Denis JohnsonRead
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.
Denis JohnsonRead
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.
Denis JohnsonRead
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 can it be?
Denis JohnsonRead
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.
Denis JohnsonRead
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