Djuna Barnes Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

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
Boats, like pet dogs, were leashed to the docks, and one little tug looking like a spitz growled at our side, sticking its nose out of the green, loose water as though it were trying to bite.

Djuna Barnes
I have been loved... by something strange, and it has forgotten me.

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

Djuna Barnes
No man needs curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.

Djuna Barnes
She was one of the most unimportantly wicked women of her time — because she could not let her time alone, and yet could never be a part of it. She wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing.

Djuna Barnes
The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.

Djuna Barnes
A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same.

Djuna Barnes
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
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
I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.

Djuna Barnes
What turn of body, what of lust
Undiced?
So we've worshipped you a little
More than Christ.

Djuna Barnes
He is not like other children, not cruel, or savage. For this very reason he is called 'strange.' A child who is mature, in the sense that the heart is mature, is always, I have observed, called deficient.

Djuna Barnes
My war brought me many things; let yours bring you as much. Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself. No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into, and remember Lady Macbeth, who had her mind in her hand. We can't all be as safe as that.

Djuna Barnes
We watched her come with subtle fire
And learned feet,
Stumbling among the lustful drunk
Yet somehow sweet. We saw the crimson leave her cheeks
Flame in her eyes;
For when a woman lives in awful haste
A woman dies. The jests that lit our hours by night
And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
And fouled its play.

Djuna Barnes
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