Djuna Barnes Quotes

I have always had a lot more trouble with my truths than with my deceits.

His head was full of larceny, but his feet were honest.

Afraid? Batman's not afraid of anything. It's me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that The Joker may be right about me. Sometimes…I question the rationality of my actions. And I’m afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates... when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me... it’ll be just like coming home.

But the older he grew and the more intimately he came to know his brother, the oftener the thought occurred to him that the power of working for the general welfare – a power of which he felt himself entirely destitute – was not a virtue but rather a lack of something: not a lack of kindly honesty and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of the power of living, of what is called heart – the aspiration which makes a man choose one out of all the innumerable paths of life that present themselves, and desire that alone.

For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.

My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged.

Now I just don't know who to tell to go to hell Who put the old devil in the distorted angel?

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity.

You're a liar!" He turned around, his black eyes snapping. "I'm also a thief, a gambler, a cheat, and a murdered. But this happens to be one of the rare times when I'm telling the truth. Go home. Consider yourself lucky. You've got a chance to start fresh. Not everyone can say the same.

Sometimes suffering is a weird attraction.

It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?

There's a restless feeling knocking on my door today.

Every Warrior of the Light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone.

Cause I's wicked, - I is. I's mighty wicked, anyhow, I can't help it.

Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.

and I try to draw the line but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time.

I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests.

In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace.

I don't think of myself as an evil monster and I hope I'm not.

Deep inside her (ih her harrowed soul) she felt a glowing ember of fury at the man responsible for this. Tha man who had put her in this position. She looked at the pistol lying beside the basin, and knew that if he were here, she would use it on him without a moment's hesitation. Knowing that made her feel confused about herself. It also made her feel a little stronger.

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

Suffering and drama begin when you lie to yourself, even if you don't realize you are lying.

It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar surface.