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One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented 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
Invented
Peculiar
Life

More quotes by 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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And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?
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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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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Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.
Djuna Barnes
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Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.
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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To love without criticism is to be betrayed.
Djuna Barnes
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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?
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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New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.
Djuna Barnes
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I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.
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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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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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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Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.
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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New York rose out of the water like a great wave that found it impossible to return again and so remained there in horror, peering out of the million windows man had caged it with.
Djuna Barnes
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Only the impossible lasts forever.
Djuna Barnes
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What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?
Djuna Barnes