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We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.

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
Skin
Skins
Wind
Clenched
Mortality
Muscles

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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I couldn't ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection. Your love would never bridge a gap it wouldn't even fill up the hole that the mice came through.
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The very condition of Woman is so subject to Hazard, so complex, and so grievous, that to place her at one moment is but to displace her at the next.
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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
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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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A man's sorrow runs uphill true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.
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No man needs curing of his individual sickness his universal malady is what he should look to.
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The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.
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Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
Djuna Barnes
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The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.
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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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I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.
Djuna Barnes
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Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
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I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat.
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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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Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?
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Love is the first lie wisdom the last.
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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.
Djuna Barnes
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What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?
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
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I have a narrative, but you will be put to it to find it.
Djuna Barnes