Djuna Barnes Quotes

Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.

Only the impossible lasts forever.

What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?

To think is to be sick.

This head has risen above its hair in a moment of abandon known only to men who have drawn their feet out of their boots to walk awhile in the corridors of the mind.

Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.

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 will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.

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.

I have a narrative, but you will be put to it to find it.

Life, the permission to know death.

To love without criticism is to be betrayed.

Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.