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Quotes from Nightwood — Djuna Barnes

1892–1982 United States

← All quotes by Djuna Barnes

11 quotes

Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself.

Nightwood (1936)

One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.

Nightwood (1936)

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.

Nightwood (1936)

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

Nightwood (1936)

Destiny and history are untidy.

Nightwood (1936)

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

Nightwood (1936)

I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat.

Nightwood (1936)

Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.

Nightwood (1936)

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?

Nightwood (1936)

In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.

Nightwood (1936)

Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.

Nightwood (1936)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Djuna Barnes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.