Djuna Barnes Quotes
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Yes, we who are full to the gorge with misery should look well around, doubting everything seen, done, spoken, precisely because we have a word for it, and not its alchemy
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For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short; for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.
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I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure.
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One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.
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Matthew,' she said, 'have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?' For a moment he did not answer. Taking up the decanter he held it to the light. 'Robin can go anywhere, do anything,' Nora continued, 'because she forgets, and I nowhere because I remember.' She came toward him. 'Matthew,' she said, 'you think I have always been like this. Once I was remorseless, but this is another love — it goes everywhere; there is no place for it to stop — it rots me away.
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Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.
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The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.
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Una's face was an unbroken block of calculation, saving where, upon her upper lip, a little down of hair fluttered. Yet it gave one an uncanny feeling. It made one think of a tassel on a hammer.
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New York rose out of the water like a great wave that found it impossible to return again and so remained there in horror, peering out of the million windows man had caged it with.
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Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.
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When one wants to become cognizant of the color and the texture of the soil, one does not get a ladder; one gets a shovel. When one wants to get into touch with the texture of the universal mind, one does not go to Boston; one goes to the Bowery.
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To think is to be sick.
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Only the impossible lasts forever.
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The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections.
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I've seen death and I didn't like it.
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Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.
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Well, isn't Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else - and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be a good Bohemian?
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I can draw and write, and you'd be foolish not to hire me.
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Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.
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When autumn shadows throw their patterns across the land, they are not the images of fragile, dying leaves, not the bared arms of lofty elms, not shadows of a fading summer; but swinging shapes as of books upon a strap, of round and square boxes held under an arm, of hurrying little people heading towards the nearest school.
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To love without criticism is to be betrayed.
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The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.
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No man needs curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.
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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
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The Seal, she lounges like a bride,Much too docile, there's no doubt;Madame Récamier, on side,(if such she has), and bottom out.
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The whole world is nothing but a noise, as hot as the inside of a tiger's mouth. They call it civilization - that is a lie! But some day you may have to go out, someone will try to take you out, and you will not understand them or what they are saying, unless you understand nothing, absolutely nothing, then you will manage.
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Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.
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Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
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Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
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No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into.
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