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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
Look
Looks
Frighten
Must
Tender
Much
Conformity
Inward
Inside
Stand
Wish

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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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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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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What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?
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I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.
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Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.
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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.
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.
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Certainty always produces questions, uncertainty statements. It is a balancing law of nature.
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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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After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
Djuna Barnes
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We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
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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There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purity's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?
Djuna Barnes
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I've seen death and I didn't like it.
Djuna Barnes
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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
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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The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.
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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For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.
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.
Djuna Barnes