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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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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
Shocking
Customs
Truth
Self
Custom

More quotes by 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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The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.
Djuna Barnes
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To love without criticism is to be betrayed.
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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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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An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.
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.
Djuna Barnes
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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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Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.
Djuna Barnes
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Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
Djuna Barnes
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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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I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.
Djuna Barnes
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I have a narrative, but you will be put to it to find it.
Djuna Barnes
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The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.
Djuna Barnes
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We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
Djuna Barnes
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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
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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
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And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?
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
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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