Djuna Barnes Quotes

Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery - because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy.

Life is a night spent in an uncomfortable inn.

"I feel like, like pudding," Iggy groaned. "Pudding with nerve endings. Pudding in great pain."

At least it was instant. At least there wasn't any pain." I knew he was only trying to help, but he didn't get it. There was pain. A dul endless pain in my gut that wouldn't go away even when I knelt on the stingingly frozen tile of the bathroom, dry-heaving.

How long the night seems to one kept awake by pain.

There is a dreadful Hell, And everlasting pains; There sinners must with devils dwell In darkness, fire, and chains.

Our possibilities of happiness are already restricted by our constitution. Unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.

The fire of hell is called eternal, only because it never ends. Still, there is change in the pains of the lost... Hence in hell true eternity does not exist, but rather time.

For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,' groaned Phil.

The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces.

When you're comfortable and secure, it's not enough. The mind doesn't stop there because it has to continue to focus itself as this body, so it moves to pleasure. And pleasure really is a non-existent thing. When we're experiencing pleasure, we're trying to hold onto it as it leaves, so it really isn't pleasure. Pleasure is pain because we're grasping.

If it felt good, you didn't push hard enough. It's supposed to hurt like hell.

When you've tried all the salves in the world and they don't work, you start thinking about fire

The truth is what hurts

I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again.

Life is an irritation.

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

I had to groan a bit on the couch when my brow was mopped - as it is when you've been shot across the chest.

The owl flies, in the moonlight, over a field where the wounded cry out. Like the owl, I fly in the night over my own misfortune.

"I saw her, in the fire, but now. I hear her in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night," returned the haunted man.