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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
Clenched
Mortality
Muscles
Skin
Skins
Wind

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An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.
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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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Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?
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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.
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Youth is cause, effect is age so with the thickening of the neck we get data.
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Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
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God, children know something they can't tell they like Red Riding Hood and the wolf in bed!
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One must not look inward too much, while the inside is yet tender. I do not wish to frighten myself until I can stand it.
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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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After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
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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?
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Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
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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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I've seen death and I didn't like it.
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For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.
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To think is to be sick.
Djuna Barnes
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New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.
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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.
Djuna Barnes