Djuna Barnes Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.

  Djuna Barnes

  Acceptance, Past, Age

  Djuna Barnes (1995). “Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts”

  10 Copy quote

• We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn't the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life's lived before it gets to the parlor door.

  Djuna Barnes

  Girl, Doors, Salad

  "The Home Club: For Servants Only". Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 12, 1913.

  7 Copy quote

• 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?

  Djuna Barnes

  Littles, Bohemian, Wells

  Djuna Barnes (2016). “Vivid and Repulsive as the Truth: The Early Works of Djuna Barnes”, p.69, Courier Dover Publications

  16 Copy quote

• I can draw and write, and you'd be foolish not to hire me.

  Djuna Barnes

  Writing, Foolish, Draws

  4 Copy quote

• One cup poured into another makes different waters; tears shed by one eye would blind if wept into another's eye. The breast we strike in joy is not the breast we strike in pain; any man's smile would be consternation on another's mouth.

  Djuna Barnes

  Pain, Eye, Men

  Djuna Barnes (1995). “Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts”

  5 Copy quote

• Youth is cause, effect is age; so with the thickening of the neck we get data.

  Djuna Barnes

  Data, Age, Causes

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.20, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. Stretch it as thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.

  Djuna Barnes

  Moving, Night, Fire

  Djuna Barnes (1995). “Nightwood: The Original Version and Related Drafts”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Djuna Barnes

  Doubting Everything, Looks, Gorges

  Djuna Barnes (2014). “Nightwood”, p.67, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• “God,” she cried, “what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you be prepared for that? Everything we can't bear in this world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once.”

  Djuna Barnes

  Honesty, Liars, Men

  "Nightwood".

  5 Copy quote

• This head has risen above its hair in a moment of abandon known only to men who have drawn their feet out of their boots to walk awhile in the corridors of the mind.

  Djuna Barnes

  Men, Hair, Gnarly

  Djuna Barnes (1996). “Collected Stories”, Sun and Moon Press

  16 Copy quote

• One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.

  Djuna Barnes

  Peculiar, Life Is

  "Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes, (Ch. 6), 1936.

  5 Copy quote

• If Helen of Troy could have been seen eating peppermints out of a paper bag, it is highly probable that her admirers would have been an entirely different class.It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for - or ignored.

  Djuna Barnes

  Class, Paper, Peppermint

  Djuna Barnes (1996). “Collected Stories”, Sun and Moon Press

  5 Copy quote

• Why is it that whenever I hear music I think I’m a bride?

  Djuna Barnes

  Thinking, Brides

  Djuna Barnes (2014). “Nightwood”, p.34, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• I've seen death and I didn't like it.

  Djuna Barnes

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Djuna Barnes

  Block, Thinking, Hair

  Djuna Barnes (2016). “Vivid and Repulsive as the Truth: The Early Works of Djuna Barnes”, p.192, Courier Dover Publications

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Djuna Barnes

  Thinking, Light, Answers

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.161, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• A man's sorrow runs uphill; true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.

  Djuna Barnes

  Sad, Running, Men

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• To love without criticism is to be betrayed.

  Djuna Barnes

  Criticism, Betrayed, Judgment

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Djuna Barnes

  Doubt, Sides, Docile

  Djuna Barnes (2005). “Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs”

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Djuna Barnes

  Summer, Book, School

  Djuna Barnes, Alyce Barry (1989). “New York”, Sun & Moon Pr

  4 Copy quote

• You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher.

  Djuna Barnes

  Men, Pounds, Philosopher

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.94, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• I couldn't ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection. Your love would never bridge a gap; it wouldn't even fill up the hole that the mice came through.

  Djuna Barnes

  Bridges, Gaps, Potatoes

  Djuna Barnes (1996). “Collected Stories”, Sun and Moon Press

  5 Copy quote

• Madness to us means reversion; to such people as Una and Lena it meant progression. Now their uncle had entered into a land beyond them, the land of fancy. For fifty years he had been as they were, silent, hard-working, unimaginative. Then all of a sudden, like a scholar passing his degree, he had gone up into another form.

  Djuna Barnes

  Uncles, Hard Work, Mean

  Djuna Barnes (2016). “Vivid and Repulsive as the Truth: The Early Works of Djuna Barnes”, p.190, Courier Dover Publications

  5 Copy quote

• For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short; for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.

  Djuna Barnes

  People, Nasty, Life Is

  5 Copy quote

• Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.

  Djuna Barnes

  Feet, Contemplative Life, Effort

  Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot (2006). “Nightwood”, p.143, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

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