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I Like My Human Experience Served Up With A Little Silence And Restraint. Silence Makes Experience Go Further And, When It Does Die, Gives It That Dignity Common To A Thing One Had Touched And Not Ravished

-Djuna Barnes

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I Like My Human

Djuna Barnes

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I Like My Human Experience Served Up With A Little Silence And Restraint. Silence Makes Experience Go Further And, When It Does Die, Gives It That Dignity Common To A Thing One Had Touched And Not Ravished

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Time Is A Great Conference Planning Our End, And Youth Is Only The Past Putting A Leg Forward.

Sleep Demands Of Us A Guilty Immunity.

Yes, We Who Are Full To The Gorge With Misery Should Look Well Around, Doubting Everything Seen, Done, Spoken, Precisely Because We Have A Word For It, And Not Its Alchemy

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I Am Not A Critic; To Me Criticism Is So Often Nothing More Than The Eye Garrulously Denouncing The Shape Of The Peephole That Gives Access To Hidden Treasure.

I've Seen Death And I Didn't Like It.

Even The Contemplative Life Is Only An Effort, Nora My Dear, To Hide The Body So The Feet Won’t Stick Out.

Contemplative Life

You Beat The Liver Out Of A Goose To Get A Pâté; You Pound The Muscles Of A Man's Cardia To Get A Philosopher.

Well, Isn't Bohemia A Place Where Everyone Is As Good As Everyone Else - And Must Not A Waiter Be A Little Less Than A Waiter To Be A Good Bohemian?

In The Acceptance Of Depravity The Sense Of The Past Is Most Truly Captured. What Is A Ruin But Time Easing Itself Of Endurance? Corruption Is The Age Of Time.

To Think Is To Be Sick.

Certainty Always Produces Questions, Uncertainty Statements. It Is A Balancing Law Of Nature.

A Man Is Whole Only When He Takes Into Account His Shadow As Well As Himself - And What Is A Man's Shadow But His Upright Astonishment?

We Are But Skin About A Wind, With Muscles Clenched Against Mortality.

A Man Is Whole Only When He Takes Into Account His Shadow.

“god,” She Cried, “what Is Love? Man Seeking His Own Head? The Human Head, So Rented By Misery That Even The Teeth Weigh! She Couldn't Tell Me The Truth Because She Had Never Planned It; Her Life Was A Continual Accident, And How Can You Be Prepared For That? Everything We Can't Bear In This World, Some Day We Find In One Person, And Love It All At Once.”

One's Life Is Peculiar To One's Own When One Has Invented It.

The Heart Of The Jealous Knows The Best And Most Satisfying Love, That Of The Other's Bed, Where The Rival Perfects The Lover's Imperfections.

Only The Impossible Lasts Forever.

The Unendurable Is The Beginning Of The Curve Of Joy.

When Autumn Shadows Throw Their Patterns Across The Land, They Are Not The Images Of Fragile, Dying Leaves, Not The Bared Arms Of Lofty Elms, Not Shadows Of A Fading Summer; But Swinging Shapes As Of Books Upon A Strap, Of Round And Square Boxes Held Under An Arm, Of Hurrying Little People Heading Towards The Nearest School.

New York Rose Out Of The Water Like A Great Wave That Found It Impossible To Return Again And So Remained There In Horror, Peering Out Of The Million Windows Man Had Caged It With.

I Like My Human Experience Served Up With A Little Silence And Restraint. Silence Makes Experience Go Further And, When It Does Die, Gives It That Dignity Common To A Thing One Had Touched And Not Ravished

I Can Draw And Write, And You'd Be Foolish Not To Hire Me.

What Is A Ruin But Time Easing Itself Of Endurance?

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She Was Nervous About The Future; It Made Her Indelicate. She Was One Of The Most Unimportantly Wicked Women Of Her Time --because She Could Not Let Her Time Alone, And Yet Could Never Be A Part Of It. She Wanted To Be The Reason For Everything And So Was The Cause Of Nothing. She Had The Fluency Of Tongue And Action Meted Out By Divine Providence To Those Who Cannot Think For Themselves. She Was The Master Of The Over-sweet Phrase, The Over-tight Embrace.

Destiny And History Are Untidy.

Matthew,' She Said, 'have You Ever Loved Someone And It Became Yourself?' For A Moment He Did Not Answer. Taking Up The Decanter He Held It To The Light. 'robin Can Go Anywhere, Do Anything,' Nora Continued, 'because She Forgets, And I Nowhere Because I Remember.' She Came Toward Him. 'matthew,' She Said, 'you Think I Have Always Been Like This. Once I Was Remorseless, But This Is Another Love — It Goes Everywhere; There Is No Place For It To Stop — It Rots Me Away.

No Man Needs Curing Of His Individual Sickness; His Universal Malady Is What He Should Look To.

I Have Been Loved,' She Said, 'by Something Strange, And It Has Forgotten Me.

Man Is The Only Thing That Has No Further Use After Something Goes Amiss.

An Image Is A Stop The Mind Makes Between Uncertainties.

There's Something Evil In Me That Loves Evil And Degradation--purity's Black Backside! That Loves Honesty With A Horrid Love; Or Why Have I Always Gone Seeking It At The Liar's Door?

New York Is The Meeting Place Of The Peoples, The Only City Where You Can Hardly Find A Typical American.

I Couldn't Ever Boil Potatoes Over The Heat Of Your Affection. Your Love Would Never Bridge A Gap; It Wouldn't Even Fill Up The Hole That The Mice Came Through.

Love Is The First Lie; Wisdom The Last.

After All, It Is Not Where One Washes One's Neck That Counts But Where One Moistens One's Throat.

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For Most People, Life Is Nasty, Brutish, And Short; For Me, It Has Simply Been Nasty And Brutish.

The Truth Is How You Say It, And To Be 'one's Self' Is The Most Shocking Custom Of All.

God, Children Know Something They Can't Tell; They Like Red Riding Hood And The Wolf In Bed!

I'm A Fart In A Gale Of Wind, A Humble Violet Under A Cow Pat.

We Are Beginning To Wonder Whether A Servant Girl Hasn't The Best Of It After All. She Knows How The Salad Tastes Without The Dressing, And She Knows How Life's Lived Before It Gets To The Parlor Door.

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The Priceless Galaxy Of Misinformation Called The Mind.

I Have A Narrative, But You Will Be Put To It To Find It.

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The Whole World Is Nothing But A Noise, As Hot As The Inside Of A Tiger's Mouth. They Call It Civilization - That Is A Lie! But Some Day You May Have To Go Out, Someone Will Try To Take You Out, And You Will Not Understand Them Or What They Are Saying, Unless You Understand Nothing, Absolutely Nothing, Then You Will Manage.

Our Bones Ache Only While The Flesh Is On Them.

There Is Always More Surface To A Shattered Object Than A Whole.

Life Is Not To Be Told, Call It As Loud As You Like, It Will Not Tell Itself.

Love Becomes The Deposit Of The Heart, Analogous In All Degrees To The 'findings' In A Tomb. As In One Will Be Charted The Taken Place Of The Body, The Raiment, The Utensils Necessary To Its Other Life, So In The Heart Of The Lover Will Be Traced, As An Indelible Shadow, That Which He Loves.

And Must I, Perchance, Like Careful Writers, Guard Myself Against The Conclusions Of My Readers?

Life Is Painful, Nasty And Short.. In My Case It Has Only Been Painful And Nasty.

The Night Is A Skin Pulled Over The Head Of Day That The Day May Be In Torment.

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To Love Without Criticism Is To Be Betrayed.

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Too Great A Sense Of Identity Makes A Man Feel He Can Do No Wrong. And Too Little Does The Same.

None Of Us Suffers As Much As We Should, Or Loves As Much As We Say. Love Is The First Lie; Wisdom The Last.

Why Is It That Whenever I Hear Music I Think I’m A Bride?

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Our Bones Ache Only While The Flesh Is On Them. Stretch It As Thin As The Temple Flesh Of An Ailing Woman And Still It Serves To Ache The Bone And To Move The Bone About; And In Like Manner The Night Is A Skin Pulled Over The Head Of Day That The Day May Be In A Torment. We Will Find No Comfort Until The Night Melts Away; Until The Fury Of The Night Rots Out Its Fire.

This Head Has Risen Above Its Hair In A Moment Of Abandon Known Only To Men Who Have Drawn Their Feet Out Of Their Boots To Walk Awhile In The Corridors Of The Mind.

I Talk Too Much Because I Have Been Made So Miserable By What You Are Keeping Hushed.

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Dreams Have Only The Pigmentation Of Fact.

The Seal, She Lounges Like A Bride,much Too Docile, There's No Doubt;madame Récamier, On Side,(if Such She Has), And Bottom Out.

Madness To Us Means Reversion; To Such People As Una And Lena It Meant Progression. Now Their Uncle Had Entered Into A Land Beyond Them, The Land Of Fancy. For Fifty Years He Had Been As They Were, Silent, Hard-working, Unimaginative. Then All Of A Sudden, Like A Scholar Passing His Degree, He Had Gone Up Into Another Form.

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