Quote

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

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
Upon
Saving
Fluttered
Feelings
Block
Uncanny
Littles
Lips
Calculation
Little
Gave
Unbroken
Made
Hair
Hammer
Think
Feeling
Calculations
Thinking
Face
Hammers
Faces
Upper
Tassels

More quotes by 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
Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
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
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
No man needs curing of his individual sickness his universal malady is what he should look to.
Djuna Barnes
Image
Only the impossible lasts forever.
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
After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
Image
We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.
Djuna Barnes
Image
Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
Djuna Barnes
Image
The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.
Djuna Barnes
Image
I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet under a cow pat.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
Image
God, children know something they can't tell they like Red Riding Hood and the wolf in bed!
Djuna Barnes
Image
We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
Djuna Barnes
Image
I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed.
Djuna Barnes
Image
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
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