Djuna Barnes Quotes

A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.

Only the impossible lasts forever.

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

No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into.

An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.

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

Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself.

The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.

Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.

I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished

Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.

Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward.

Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.

The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.

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

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?

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.

Destiny and history are untidy.

Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?

Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same.

The whole world is nothing but a noise, as hot as the inside of a tiger's mouth. They call it civilization - that is a lie! But some day you may have to go out, someone will try to take you out, and you will not understand them or what they are saying, unless you understand nothing, absolutely nothing, then you will manage.

She was nervous about the future; it made her indelicate. 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. She had the fluency of tongue and action meted out by divine providence to those who cannot think for themselves. She was the master of the over-sweet phrase, the over-tight embrace.

None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.

The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.