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Djuna Barnes
30 quotes
“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 (1892–1982) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Home Club: For Servants Only, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (12 October 1913)
“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.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Songs of Synge: The Man Who Shaped His Life as He Shaped His Plays", in New York Morning Telegraph (18 February 1917)
“New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Greenwich Village as It Is, in Pearson’s Magazine (October 1916)
“After all, it is not where one washes one’s neck that counts but where one moistens one’s throat.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Greenwich Village as It Is, in Pearson’s Magazine (October 1916)
“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 (1892–1982) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Becoming Intimate with the Bohemians, New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine (19 November 1916)
“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 (1892–1982) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Do You See, Madam? (1932)
“Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Emily Holmes Coleman (2 February 1934)
“Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a 1960 letter to Natalie Barney, as quoted in Paris Was a Woman (1995) by Andrea Weiss, p. 173
“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 (1892–1982) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Creatures in an Alphabet (1982)
“We are adhering to life now with our last muscle — the heart.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "The Way of Transition : Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments" (2002) by William Bridges, p. 204
“There is always more surface to a shattered object than a whole.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter to Emily Coleman, as quoted in The Book of Repulsive Women and Other Poems : Selected Poems (2003), edited by Rebecca Loncraine, p. xi
“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 (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What turn of card, what trick of game Undiced? And you we valued still a little More than Christ.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somewhere beneath her hurried curse, A corpse lies bounding in a hearse; And friends and relatives disperse, And are not stirred.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What turn of body, what of lust Undiced? So we've worshipped you a little More than Christ.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Destiny and history are untidy.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself — and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Morbid? You make me laugh. This life I write and draw and portray is life as it is, and therefore you call it morbid. Look at my life. Look at the life around me. Where is this beauty that I am supposed to miss? The nice episodes that others depict? Is not everything morbid? I mean the life of people stripped of their masks. Where are the relieving features? Often I sit down to work at my drawing board, at my typewriter. All of a sudden my joy is gone. I feel tired of it all because, I think, "What's the use?" Today we are, tomorrow dead. We are born and don't know why. We live and suffer and strive, envious or envied. We love, we hate, we work, we admire, we despise. … Why? And we die, and no one will ever know that we have been born.”
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When asked why she is "so dreadfully morbid", in an interview with Guido Bruno (December 1919)