Djuna Barnes Quotes

I might have known better, nothing is what everybody wants, the world runs on that law. Personally, if I could, I would instigate Meat-Axe Day, and out of the goodness of my heart I would whack your head off with a couple of others. Every man should be allowed one day and a hatchet just to ease his heart.

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

And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?

After all, it is not where one washes one’s neck that counts but where one moistens one’s throat.

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

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.

Das Leben ist ewig; darin liegt seine Schönheit.

There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation — purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?

Our bones only ache while the flesh is on them. Stretch it 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.

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

To think is to be sick.

I also know this,’ he went on: ‘One cup poured into another makes different water; 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. Rear up eternal river, here comes grief! Man has no foothold that is not also a bargain. So be it! Laughing I came into Pacific Street, and laughing I’m going out of it; laughter is the pauper’s money.

I went into a lather of misery watching them, and thinking of you, and how in the end you'll all be locked together, like the poor beasts that get their antlers mixed and are found dead that way, their heads fattened with a knowledge of each other that they never wanted, having had to contemplate each other, head-on, eye to eye, until death; well, that will be you and Jenny and Robin.

I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.

now I see that night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep.