Djuna Barnes Quotes

The soul never thinks without a picture.

The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

Sometimes I see it and then paint it. Other times I paint it and then see it. Both are impure situations, and I prefer neither.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind

Imagination is a powerful force underlying all knowing

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

Only thought can resemble. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it.

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves - they don't need be told what to.

Therefore, when we arrive in a place and talk to new people about a new image, it is very hard for them to visualize it. That's where the drawings are very important, because at least we can show a projection of what we believe it will look like.

An object is not first imagined or thought about and then expected or willed, but in being actively expected it is imagined as future and in being willed it is thought.

It's very hard to know what wisdom is.

I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction.

As long as they're making beloved books into movies, people are going to be like, 'That's not my mental image of them.' It takes that moment for it to click and become their mental image.

I only think in live action.

Imagination is a funny thing - we sometimes need to see something before we can truly picture it.

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Insight is not a matter of memory, of knowledge and time, which are all thought.