179 Quotes by Djuna Barnes

The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.

There is a gap in "world pain" through which the singular falls continually and forever; a body falling in observable space, deprived of the privacy of disappearance; as if privacy, moving relentlessly away, by the very sustaining power of its withdrawal kept the body eternally moving downward, but in one place, and perpetually before the eye.

But death is intimacy walking backward. We are crazed with grief when she, who once permitted us, leaves to us the only recollection.

Robin told only a little of her life, but she kept repeating in one way or another her wish for a home, as if she were afraid she would be lost again, as if she were aware, without conscious knowledge, that she belonged to Nora, and that if Nora did not make it permanent by her own strength, she would forget.

No man needs curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.

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?

Man was born damned and innocent from the start, and wretchedly - as he must - on those two themes - whistles his tune.

Sorrow fiddles the ribs and no man should put his hand on anything; there is no direct way. The foetus of symmetry nourishes itself on cross purposes; this is its wonderful unhappiness

there's something wrong with any art that makes a woman all bust