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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

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More quotes by Djuna Barnes

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

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)

I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure.

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)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Djuna Barnes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.