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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.

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
Inside
Stand
Wish
Look
Looks
Frighten
Must
Tender
Much
Conformity
Inward

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
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To love without criticism is to be betrayed.
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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
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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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The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.
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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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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.
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No man needs curing of his individual sickness his universal malady is what he should look to.
Djuna Barnes
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Love is the first lie wisdom the last.
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Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?
Djuna Barnes
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We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
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Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.
Djuna Barnes
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If Helen of Troy could have been seen eating peppermints out of a paper bag, it is highly probable that her admirers would have been an entirely different class.It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for - or ignored.
Djuna Barnes
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I've seen death and I didn't like it.
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.
Djuna Barnes
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Madness to us means reversion to such people as Una and Lena it meant progression. Now their uncle had entered into a land beyond them, the land of fancy. For fifty years he had been as they were, silent, hard-working, unimaginative. Then all of a sudden, like a scholar passing his degree, he had gone up into another form.
Djuna Barnes
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Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.
Djuna Barnes
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Youth is cause, effect is age so with the thickening of the neck we get data.
Djuna Barnes
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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.
Djuna Barnes
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God, children know something they can't tell they like Red Riding Hood and the wolf in bed!
Djuna Barnes