“She speaks of people taking away her ‘faith’ in them, as if faith were a transportable object—all her life she has been subject to the feeling of ‘removal.” LoveFaithTrustDespairBetrayalNightwoodDjuna Barnes Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“Suffering is the decay of the heart, all that we have loved becomes the 'forbidden' when we have not understood it all, as the pauper is the rudiment of a city, knowing something of the city, which the city, for its own destiny, wants to forget. So the lover must got against nature to find love.” LoveSuffering Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“I tell you, Madame, if one gave birth to a heart on a plate, it would say 'Love' and twitch like the lopped leg of a frog.” LoveHeartFrog Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“She was gracious and yet fading, like an old statue in a garden, that symbolizes the weather through which it has endured, and is not so much the work of man as the work of wind and rain and the herd of the seasons, and though formed in men's image is a figure of doom.” MenLoveWomenBeautyGardenSeasonsIndependenceWeatherImageryWoman S StrengthDjuna Barnes Author:Djuna Barnes
“The heart of the jealous knows the best and the most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections. Fancy gallops to take part in that duel, unconstrained by any certain articulation of the laws of that unseen game.” LoveJealousyLoverRival Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“He knew at the same time that this stricture of acceptance (by which what we must love is made into what we can love) would eventually be a part of himself” LoveAcceptance Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“Since her emotional reactions were without distinction, she had to fall back on the emotions of the past, great loves already lived and related, and over those she seemed to suffer and grow glad.” LovePastEmotions Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
“We look to the East for a wisdom that we shall not use - and to the sleeper for the secret that we shall not find. So, I say, what of the night, the terrible night? The darkness is the closet in which your lover roosts her heart, and that night-fowl that caws against her spirit and yours, dropping between you and her the awful estrangement of his bowels. The drip of your tears in his implacable pulse. Night people do not bury their dead, but on the neck of you, their beloved and waking, sling the creature, husked of its gestures. And where you go, it goes, the two of you, your living and her dead, that will not die; to daylight, to life, to grief, until both are carrion.” LoveNightSleepEstrangement Book:Nightwood Source: Nightwood
