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Quote by Denis Johnson

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Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

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Author

Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson is an American writer born on July 1, 1949. His works are known for their profound psychological insights and unique narrative style, having won numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. more

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“The Klavaret won resoundingly that year, singing in their traditional method: vibrating their stamens at the precise frequency of empathy, allowing the audience to hear one another’s favorite childhood lullabies, thousands upon thousands of them, at which point Suns n’ Roses broke down, mashed up, and remixed that noise into a truly sick beat. Last year, they finally managed to snatch the crown again with their dance craze ‘Let’s Talk About Our Feelings So No One Has to Hurt Inside.’ It would have been a unanimous verdict, except for the Yurtmak, who vomited on their ballot and then put it in the box with a huge, razor-toothed grin.”

“He read what he could find—the distilled knowledge of hundreds of experts. He couldn’t follow all the physiology. The body had evolved to feel fear, hope, thrill, and peace in the presence of certain semi-ordered vibrations; no one knew why. It made no sense that a few staggered chords could make the brain love an unmet stranger or grieve for friends who hadn’t died. Nobody could say why Barber moved listeners and Babbitt didn’t, or whether an infant might be raised to weep at Carter. But all the experts agreed that waves of compressed air falling on the eardrum touched off chain reactions that flooded the body in signals and even changed the expression of genes.”

“The story of ten-year engagement and of Ormus’ consequent oath of celibacy spreads quickly; and this, too, makes Ormus and Vina irresistible. The new band takes off almost at once, and the force of its ascending shakes the land. Starting at oddities, ther grow quickly into giants. At once conqueror and celebrant, Ormus storms the citadels of rock, and Vina’s voice, as Yul Singh oversaw, is his weapon. Her voice is the servant of his melodies, his singing the servant of her voice.”

“Samplers and their descendents, the PCM synthesizers (especially the Korg M1 and the Roland JV series), imitated not only real instruments much better than analog synthesizers, but also imitated analog synthesizers so well that the latter threatened to follow in the dinosaurs’ footsteps.”