Jenny Johnson famous quotes

Writing for me is an ongoing practice of facing and countering fears. And so, in that sense, I have always been responding to phobias. I am often most surprised by the writing that comes from facing fears that strike closest to home, poems that explore internalized phobias about gender identity, sexuality, and the body, poems that struggle with a question like do I deserve love?
-- Jenny Johnson

#Struggle #Home #Writing

I do think that our bodies are capable of many magical and inexplicable things that have nothing to do with reproduction. I have read that some birds may sing just for pleasure and not for any other Darwinian imperative. Birds singing because it feels good - that's the kind of biology that helps me understand this diverse world.
-- Jenny Johnson

#Thinking #Feel Good #Bird

A poem is a liminal space that can offer a sensation of belonging. A poem won't bring you a cold beer, but it may offer you a stool where you can sit down and feel momentarily at home. LGBT folks need intergenerational spaces where their lives and experiences are foregrounded.
-- Jenny Johnson

#Home #Beer #Lgbt

On the key to a successful Twitter account: Write the things that you think are funny and that's what's gonna click with people.
-- Jenny Johnson

#Writing #Successful #Thinking

I think normative or binary lenses for seeing bodies often crush or delegitimize other felt physical experiences of being and desiring. I've found that such inadequate ways of understanding bodies can be - but aren't always - based on biological perspectives.
-- Jenny Johnson

#Crush #Thinking #Perspective

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

Winning the war on terrorism will also require a level of moral clarity that can provide a vision for struggling people and nations everywhere.

Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.

Science fiction is a field of writing where, month after month, every printed word implies to hundreds of thousands of people: 'There is change. Look, today's fantastic story is tomorrow's fact.

I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.