Charles R. Johnson > Quotes

“The Apocalypse would definitely put a crimp in my career plans.”
― Charles Johnson, Middle Passage

“We worked in silence. One thing I liked about the cook was that he knew when to shut up even when he was mubblefubbled and dying to talk. Occasionally, I felt his eyes, like fishhooks, try to catch mine as we squeezed past one another in the narrow galley, but he kept his thoughts untongued. Personally, I was too pitchkettled to trust my own speech.”
― Charles R. Johnson, Middle Passage

“Furthermore, plot, as JG wisely put it, is the storyteller's equivalent to the philosopher's argument; its importance lies in it being an interpretation (one based on causation) of why the world works the way it does.”
― Charles R. Johnson

“(And, as you know, opinions are like assholes---everybody has one.)”
― Charles R. Johnson, Night Hawks: Stories

“student wrote: If one is trying to do something really well, one becomes, first of all, interested in it, and later absorbed in it,which means that one forgets oneself in concentrating on what one is doing. But when one forgets oneself, oneself ceases to exist, since oneself is the only thing which causes oneself to exist. —Christmas Humphreys, Concentration and Meditation For”
― Charles R. Johnson, Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing