179 Quotes by Djuna Barnes

Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.

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

Life is painful, nasty and short . . . in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

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?

I can draw and write, and you’d be foolish not to hire me.

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

Yes, we who are full to the gorge with misery should look well around, doubting everything seen, done, spoken, precisely because we have a word for it, and not its alchemy.

Una’s face was an unbroken block of calculation, saving where, upon her upper lip, a little down of hair fluttered. Yet it gave one an uncanny feeling. It made one think of a tassel on a hammer.

I’ve seen death and I didn’t like it.