Quotes from Djuna Barnes

To be utterly innocent would be to be utterly unknown, particularly to oneself.

The girl lost, what is she but the Prince found?

Every man has a house-broken heart except the great man.

It is only by such extreme measures that the average man can remember something long ago; truly, not that he remembers, but that crime itself is the door to an accumulation, a way to lay hands on the shudder of a past that is still vibrating.

They go far back in our lost distance where what we never had stands waiting; it was inevitable that we should come upon them, for our miscalculated longing has created them.

Dusty books are my one real passion. New books are like young girls--fit for nothing. A secondhand book is like a person who has traveled; it is only when a book has been handled by several persons and has become dirty that it's fit for contemplation.

When a Jew dies on a Christian bosom he dies impaled.

Selles voodis oleksime unustanud oma elu, oleksime jõudnud mäletamise äärmise piirini; me kehad oleksid ühte sulanud, justnagu kujud vahakujude muuseumis on sulatatud ühte nende ajalooga, nii oleksime meie lagunenud armastuseks.

Only the impossible lasts forever, with time, it is made accessible. Robin's love and mine was always impossible, and loving each other, we no longer love. Yet we love each other like death.

Diejenigen, die es "nie zu etwas brachten" (...), hätten es auch überall sonst nie zu etwas gebracht. Es wäre einfach nur lustvoller, es in Paris nie zu etwas zu bringen.

Oh, for God's sweet sake, couldn't you stand not learning your lesson? Because the lesson we learn is always by giving death and a sword to our lover.

You Know what none of us know until we have died. You were dead in the beginning.

You know what man really desires?" inquired the doctor, grinning into the immobile face of the Baron. "One of two things: to find someone who is so stupid that he can lie to her, or to love someone so much that she can lie to him.

Ich dachte (...) an die beiden alten Männer, die einander rasierten, während die Welt sich weiter drehte, denn schließlich und endlich wird das Männerhaar trotz Friedensvertrag und Kampf um die Vormacht in Irland weiterwachsen.

Sie können bis aufs Letzte entblößen, was Ihre Mutter Ihnen mitgegeben hat, und ich werde noch immer absolut nicht davon überzeugt sein, daß so etwas wie Nacktheit existiert.

Any man can look upon the head in death, but no man can look upon the feet.

Suffering is the decay of the heart, all that we have loved becomes the 'forbidden' when we have not understood it all, as the pauper is the rudiment of a city, knowing something of the city, which the city, for its own destiny, wants to forget. So the lover must got against nature to find love.

You wring your hands to see it, and that's another illustration of love; in the end you are too heavy to move with the greediness of the stomach.

If you don't want to suffer you should tear yourself apart.

If I should try to put it into words, I mean how I did see her, it would be incomprehensible, for the simple reason that I find that I never did have a really clear idea of her at any time. I had an image of her, but that is not the same thing. An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties. I had gathered, of course, a good deal from you, and later, after she went away, from others, but this only strengthened my confusion. The more we learn of a person, the less we know.

So love, when it has gone, taking time with it, leaves a memory of its weight

What do they find then, that this lover has committed the unpardonable error of not being able to exist—and they come down with a dummy in their arms. God's last round, shadow-boxing, that the heart may be murdered and swept into that quiet still place where it can sit and say: 'Once I was, now I can rest.

What do they find then, that this lover has committed the unpardonable error of not being able to exist—and they come down with a dummy in their arms. God's last round, shadow-boxing, that the heart may be murdered and swept into that still quiet place where it can sit and say: 'Once I was, now I can rest.

Only the impossible lasts forever; with time, it is made accessible.