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 Copy Share Image
“There goes the dismantled—Love has fallen off her wall. A religious woman,” he thought to himself, “without the joy and safety of the Catholic faith, which at a pinch covers up the spots on the wall when the family portraits take a slide; take that safety from a woman,” he said to himself, quickening his step to follow her, “and… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share
Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember? — Djuna Barnes Copy Share Image
A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same. — Djuna Barnes Copy Share Image
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… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share
When one wants to become cognizant of the color and the texture of the soil, one does not get a ladder; one gets a… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share Image
“The perfume that her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odour of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share
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 prepare for that? Everything we can't bear in the world, some day we find in… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share
Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on. — Djuna Barnes Copy Share Image
“No man need curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.” — Djuna Barnes Copy Share Image
When autumn shadows throw their patterns across the land, they are not the images of fragile, dying leaves, not the bared arms of lofty… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share Image
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… — Djuna Barnes Copy Share
