16 Quotes & Sayings By Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes was an American author of novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and plays. She is best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), which was included on the list of Modern Library 100 Best Novels. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1
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. Djuna Barnes
2
There's something wrong with any art that makes a woman all bust Djuna Barnes
3
The ballerina on perfected toe Spins to the axis of a fortitude That is the sum of all her yesterdays. Djuna Barnes
4
The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy. Djuna Barnes
5
...he is not like other children, not cruel, or savage. For this very reason he is called 'strange.' A child who is mature, in the sense that the heart is mature, is always, I have observed, called deficient. Djuna Barnes
6
I have been loved, " she said, "by something strange, and it has forgotten me. Djuna Barnes
7
None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last. Djuna Barnes
8
To think is to be sick... Djuna Barnes
9
I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished. Djuna Barnes
10
She said to herself: 'Is not the gown the natural raiment of extremity? What nation, what religion, what ghost, what dream has not worn it–infants, angels, priests, the dead; why–should not the doctor, in the grave dilemma of his alchemy, wear his dress?' She thought: 'He dresses to lie beside himself, who is so constructed that love, for him, can be only something special; in a room that giving back evidence of his occupancy, is as mauled as the last agony. Djuna Barnes
11
He knew at the same time that this stricture of acceptance (by which what we must love is made into what we can love) would eventually be a part of himself Djuna Barnes
12
I was doing well enough until you came along and kicked my stone over, and out I came, all moss and eyes. Djuna Barnes
13
To love without criticism is to be betrayed. Djuna Barnes
14
I might have known better, nothing is what everybody wants, the world runs on that law. Personally, if I could, I would instigate Meat-Axe Day, and out of the goodness of my heart I would whack your head off with a couple of others. Every man should be allowed one day and a hatchet just to ease his heart. Djuna Barnes
15
We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart. Djuna Barnes