179 Quotes by Djuna Barnes

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.

Sometimes to be utterly innocent," he went on, "would be to be utterly unknown, particularly to oneself.

This would be a fine world, Lord, if you could get everybody out of it.

Since her emotional reactions were without distinction, she had to fall back on the emotions of the past, great loves already lived and related, and over those she seemed to suffer and grow glad.

You Know what none of us know until we have died. You were dead in the beginning.

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 her hand. We can't all be as safe as that.

To pay homeage to our past is the only gesture that also includes the future.

The wise men say that the remembrance of things past is all that we have for the future, and am I to blame if I've turned up this time as I shouldn't have been, when it was a high soprano I wanted, and deep corn curls to my bum, with a womb as of a fishing schooner? And what do I get but a face on me like an old child's bottom - is that happiness, do you think?

Selles voodis oleksime unustanud oma elu, oleksime jõudnud mäletamise äärmise piirini; me kehad oleksid ühte sulanud, justnagu kujud vahakujude muuseumis on sulatatud ühte nende ajalooga, nii oleksime meie lagunenud armastuseks.