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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.

Djuna Barnes

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Djuna Barnes
Age: 90 †
Born: 1892
Born: June 12
Died: 1982
Died: June 18
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Cornwall on Hudson
New York
Lydia Steptoe
Joy
Unendurable
Curve
Curves
Beginning

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.
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Only the impossible lasts forever.
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I have a narrative, but you will be put to it to find it.
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To think is to be sick.
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We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.
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No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into.
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Una's face was an unbroken block of calculation, saving where, upon her upper lip, a little down of hair fluttered. Yet it gave one an uncanny feeling. It made one think of a tassel on a hammer.
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The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections.
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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.
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After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
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We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
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Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
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Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
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The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.
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And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?
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To love without criticism is to be betrayed.
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What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?
Djuna Barnes
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Yes, we who are full to the gorge with misery should look well around, doubting everything seen, done, spoken, precisely because we have a word for it, and not its alchemy
Djuna Barnes
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When one wants to become cognizant of the color and the texture of the soil, one does not get a ladder one gets a shovel. When one wants to get into touch with the texture of the universal mind, one does not go to Boston one goes to the Bowery.
Djuna Barnes
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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.
Djuna Barnes