Tree of Smoke Quotes

“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.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Everybody’s got a mean side. Just don’t feed it till it grows.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“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.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“This life is but the childhood of our immortality.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Solutions like, We solve the problems? Or solutions like, We dissolve fuckers in acid?”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn’t it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don’t we, and we constantly invoke our God. It’s got to be about something bigger than dying, or we’d all turn deserter.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“If illness didn’t kill you, you died of bad luck.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“The scene before her flattened, lost one of its dimensions, and the noise dribbled irrelevantly down its face. Something was coming. This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking--someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lives, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“At the sight of the flag he tasted tears in his throat. In the Stars and Stripes all the passions of his life coalesced to produce the ache with which he loved the United States of America - with which he loved the dirty, plain, honest faces of GIs in the photographs of World War Two, with which he loved the sheets of rain rippling across the green playing field toward the end of the school year, with which he cherished the sense-memories of the summers in his childhood, the many Kansas summers, running the bases, falling harmlessly onto the grass, his head beating with heat, the stunned streets of breezeless afternoons, the thick, palpable shade of colossal elms, the muttering of radios beyond the windowsills, the whirring of redwing blackbirds, the sadness of the grown-ups at their incomprehensible pursuits, the voices carrying over the yards in the dusks that fell later and later, the trains moving through town into the sky. His love for his country, his homeland, was a love for the United States of America in the summertime. ”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“The Americans won't win. They're not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“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, Tree of Smoke

“We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“WE'RE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF REALITY ITSELF. RIGHT WHERE IT TURNS INTO A DREAM”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Who said it? – probably Confucius – “I can’t beat a sculpture from a stone with a sledgehammer; I can’t free the soul of man by violence.” Peace was here, peace was now. Peace promised in any other time or place was a lie.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“We live in the post-trash, man. It'll be a real short eon. Down in the ectoplasmic circuitry where humanity's leaders are all linked up unconsciously with each other and with the masses, man, there's been this unanimous worldwide decision to trash the planet and get on to a new one.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“THE PEOPLE'S THIRST FOR FREEDOM HAS DRIVEN US TO DRINK BAD WATER.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“It seemed the two held forth on parallel tracks, confident of meeting somewhere in infinity.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“News had reached his ears that they planned to distribute mixtures alongside Route One and Route Twenty-two to kill the vegetation there. Depriving ambushers of cover was a good idea, he thought. But this was the loveliest country on the earth. Sorrow and war lay all over it, true, but the sickness of sorrow had never before penetrated the land itself. He didn’t like to see it poisoned.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Sooner or later the mind grasps at a thought and follows it into the labyrinth, one thought branching into another. Then the labyrinth caves in on itself and you find yourself outside. You were never inside--it was a dream.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“The movie’s not over till everybody’s dead.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Survival is the foundation of triumph.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“I have one ship and they call me a pirate. You have a fleet and they call you an Emperor. I can’t remember who said it.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Well, you were sad about the kids for a while, for a month, two months, three months. You’re sad about the kids, sad about the animals, you don’t do the women, you don’t kill the animals, but after that you realize this is a war zone and everybody here lives in it. You don’t care whether these people live or die tomorrow, you don’t care whether you yourself live or die tomorrow, you kick the children aside, you do the women, you shoot the animals.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Her zealous hope of Heaven made it hell there.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Night again, the insects are loud, the moths are killing themselves on the lamp. Two hours ago I sat on the veranda looking out at the dusk, filled with envy for each living entity—bird, bug, blossom, reptile, tree, and vine—that doesn’t bear the burden of the knowledge of good and evil. The abyss is full of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the abyss is alive”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Since Marco Polo, he thought, this climate has defeated Western civilization.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“War is ninety percent myth anyway, isn’t it? In order to prosecute our own wars we raise them to the level of human sacrifice, don’t we, and we constantly invoke our God. It’s got to be about something bigger than dying, or we’d all turn deserter. I think we need to be much more conscious of that. I think we need to be invoking the other fellow’s gods too.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking - someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lies, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke

“Well, it’s very much for each person to experience alone,” he said, and whatever truth he meant to get at, his eyes were the visible scars of it.”
― Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke