179 Quotes by Djuna Barnes

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?

There’s something evil in me that loves evil and degradation – purity’s black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar’s door?

God, children know something they can’t tell; they like Red Riding Hood and the wolf in bed!

She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden, that symbolizes the weather through which it has endured, and is not so much the work of man as the work of wind and rain and the herd of the seasons, and though formed in men’s image is a figure of doom.

I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat.

No man really wants his freedom. He gets a habit as quickly as possible – it is a form of immortality.

You know what man really desires?” inquired the doctor, grinning into the immobile face of the Baron. “One of two things: to find someone who is so stupid that he can lie to her, or to love someone so much that she can lie to him.

For a lover who dies, no matter how forgotten, will take somewhat of you to the grave.

Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the ‘findings’ in a tomb. As in one will be charted the taken place of the body, the raiment, the utensils necessary to its other life, so in the heart of the lover will be traced, as an indelible shadow, that which he loves.