Djuna Barnes Quotes

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

All love is unrequited. All of it.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.

Love is short, forgetting is long, and understanding longer still.

I will never be yours, and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you, I love you, I love you.

From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.

There's no ifs and buts or maybes, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss my loving.

I have always been the lover - never the beloved - and I have spent much of my life waiting for trains, planes, boats, footsteps, doorbells, letters, telephones, snow, rain, thunder.

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

When love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.

Love was like rain: it turned into ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you’re lagging, I may remember him!

I dropped my phone on the floor and let the pain assail me. I'd given my heart away to someone who didn't want it. Even knowing that, I didn't regret it. I just wanted him to want me. I just wanted him to love me too.

How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.

I was the only one who knew the whole truth about Lucas--who he really was, and what we felt for each other. The truth was all I had left of him, and I would have to carry it alone.

I have had a thousand kisses, for which with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the thousand and first—‘t would put me to the proof how great a misery I could live through.

The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.

I had been rejected, but I was still in love.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

I never liked the men I loved and never loved the men I liked.

Do you know what it's like to love and be alone?

Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.

I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness.