Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barneywas an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth31 October 1876
CountryUnited States of America
art expression way
All expression, all art, is an indiscretion we commit against ourselves. This is not an 'impoverishment' but an increase in wealth, for it is in this way that we make the short hours of our lives live on beyond themselves.
men lazy-man literature
Fatalism is the lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable.
eye hair vices
albinos aren't reproached for having pink eyes and whitish hair, why should they hold it again me for being a lesbian? It's a question of nature: my queerness isn't a vice, isn't 'deliberate,' and harms no one.
fall tree fruit
A thought falls like a ripe fruit from the tree of idleness.
status-quo
In love there is no status quo.
pain powerful men
Perhaps a reign of powerful women is necessary to make, or unmake when need be, powerful men. Women would not waste so readily and uselessly the lives they had such care and pain in bearing. Why should they submit to the massacre of the innocent, one generation after another ... and allow them to be brought up as live-stock for the inevitable killing?
book ifs asks
To those who ask if I have read their book, I reply: I have not yet read Homer.
annoying passages
What makes bad writers so annoying is their good passages.
privilege tact
Indiscretion has always seemed to me to be one of the privileges of tact.
rooftops difficult
... anything difficult to say must be shouted from the rooftops.
silence
Silence too can be indiscreet.
style abuse foundation
To mis-quote is the very foundation of original style. The success of most writers is almost entirely due to continuous and courageous abuse of familiar misquotation.
book looks
My only books were women's looks.
war thinking boring
To think about and prepare for war is boring, boring for everyone. It's being locked in barracks.