Quote

The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.

Djuna Barnes

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Truth
Self
Custom
Shocking
Customs

More quotes by Djuna Barnes

Image
After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
Djuna Barnes
Image
We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
Djuna Barnes
Image
Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.
Djuna Barnes
Image
The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
Djuna Barnes
Image
Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?
Djuna Barnes
Image
An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.
Djuna Barnes
Image
I've seen death and I didn't like it.
Djuna Barnes
Image
I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.
Djuna Barnes
Image
I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
Image
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
Image
New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
Image
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.
Djuna Barnes
Image
Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
Djuna Barnes
Image
The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
Image
For most people, life is nasty, brutish, and short for me, it has simply been nasty and brutish.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
Image
Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
Djuna Barnes