179 Quotes by Djuna Barnes

We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn’t the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life’s lived before it gets to the parlor door.

Everything we can’t bear in this world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once.

Have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?

The heart of the jealous knows the best and the most satisfying love, that of the other’s bed, where the rival perfects the lover’s imperfections. Fancy gallops to take part in that duel, unconstrained by any certain articulation of the laws of that unseen game.

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.

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?

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

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