Djuna Barnes Quotes

Binaries aside, we are the products of our relationships with our identities - cities we have built, bodies we have embraced, kindred souls we've cherished, our memories, our dreams, the fears we hide, the pain we hold - identities that cannot be reduced to a collection of labels.

I think over time you learn to know a bit more about yourself - you develop a certain amount of self-insight and self-awareness, and you know what you can absorb, and what you cannot; what gets to you and what doesn't.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

You've got to show the world who you are before it tells you. Otherwise you become victim to someone you're not.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

When I go back and read my journals or fiction, I am always surprised. I may not remember having those thoughts, but they still exist and I know they are mine, and it's all part of making sense of who I am.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.

I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.

One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth is what one becomes.

Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.

I know who I am by now. And I am my own brand.

I have no control whatsoever on how people perceive me from the Right or the Left. All I have control over is who I say I am.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

You don't realize how much a part of your character is part of yourself until you are no longer playing that character.

No, I feel like my personality probably influenced the character, more than the character influenced me.

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.

Yeah, well my name is Bai Ling. That means white spirit, and I really feel like sometimes I'm not existing.

My real self is probably more creative and more frightening than any sort of drink or drug-induced state.

There's nothing harder than defining oneself.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

In solitude, we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours.