Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barneswas an American writer and artist best known for her novel Nightwood, a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth12 June 1892
CityStorm King Mountain, NY
CountryUnited States of America
war hands mind
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.
thinking brides
Why is it that whenever I hear music I think I’m a bride?
wind skins mortality
We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality.
running men sorrow
A man's sorrow runs uphill; true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.
feet contemplative-life effort
Even the contemplative life is only an effort, Nora my dear, to hide the body so the feet won’t stick out.
bridges gaps potatoes
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 ...
pain eye men
One cup poured into another makes different waters; tears shed by one eye would blind if wept into another's eye. The breast we strike in joy is not the breast we strike in pain; any man's smile would be consternation on another's mouth.
boston color mind
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.
sleep demand guilty
Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity.
doubting-everything looks gorges
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
mind littles be-careful
No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into...
wish looks too-much
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.
self truth-is shocking
The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.
taken heart love-is
Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the 'findings' in a tomb. As in one will be charted the taken place of the body, the raiment, the utensils necessary to its other life, so in the heart of the lover will be traced, as an indelible shadow, that which he loves.