Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barneswas an American writer and artist best known for her novel Nightwood, a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth12 June 1892
CityStorm King Mountain, NY
CountryUnited States of America
sweet thinking wicked
She was nervous about the future; it made her indelicate. 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. She wanted to be the reason for everything and so was the cause of nothing. She had the fluency of tongue and action meted out by divine providence to those who cannot think for themselves. She was the master of the over-sweet phrase, the over-tight embrace.
bohemia good less waiter
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?
case life nasty painful short
Life is painful, nasty and short . . . in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
american-novelist gives man
A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same.
necks throat
After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
war hands mind
My war brought me many things; let yours bring you as much. 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.
running men sorrow
A man's sorrow runs uphill; true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.
conclusion reader careful
And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?
summer book school
When autumn shadows throw their patterns across the land, they are not the images of fragile, dying leaves, not the bared arms of lofty elms, not shadows of a fading summer; but swinging shapes as of books upon a strap, of round and square boxes held under an arm, of hurrying little people heading towards the nearest school.
taken heart love-is
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.
thinking brides
Why is it that whenever I hear music I think I’m a bride?
girl doors salad
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.
endurance ruins depravity
What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?
moving night fire
Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. Stretch it as thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.