Quotes from Djuna Barnes

After all, it is not where one washes one's neck that counts but where one moistens one's throat.

The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.

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.

Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.

Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on.

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?

None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.

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.

Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward.

We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.

New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.

A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.

Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss.

An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself - and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?

Too great a sense of identity makes a man feel he can do no wrong. And too little does the same.

No man needs curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.

A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same.

Ife is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

Destiny and history are untidy.