After the film it was raining, a light steady rain. Ruthless neon on the wet streets like busted candy.
Denis JohnsonRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the disconnect between dreams and reality in a person's life.
Denis Johnson's quote highlights the profound sadness of human existence, where individuals often struggle to express their true inner dreams and grapple with the reality surrounding them. This disconnect creates a sense of pity, as it emphasizes the isolation and unfulfilled potential that can accompany life, leading to a deeper contemplation of existence itself.
Themes
LifeDreamsRealityExistencePity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the struggles of mental health, one might reference this quote to illustrate the disconnect between one's inner world and outer reality.
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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Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.
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