Djuna Barnes - The book of repulsive women (1915)

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Djuna Barnes Quotes
Ah God! she settles down we say;
It means her powers slip away
It means she draws back day by day
From good or bad.

Djuna Barnes
Someday beneath some hard
Capricious star —
Spreading its light a little
Over far,
We'll know you for the woman
That you are.

Djuna Barnes
One sees you sitting in the sun
Asleep;
With the sweeter gifts you had
And didn't keep,
One grieves that the altars of
Your vice lie deep.

Djuna Barnes
Ravelling grandly into vice
Dropping crooked into rhyme.
Slipping through the stitch of virtue,
Into crime.

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

Djuna Barnes
What turn of card, what trick of game
Undiced?
And you we valued still a little
More than Christ.

Djuna Barnes
Somewhere beneath her hurried curse,
A corpse lies bounding in a hearse;
And friends and relatives disperse,
And are not stirred.

Djuna Barnes
There is always more surface to a shattered object than a whole.

Djuna Barnes