Quotes from book
Nightwood
Nightwood is a 1936 novel by Djuna Barnes first published in London by Faber and Faber. It is one of the earliest prominent novels to portray explicit homosexuality between women, and as such can be considered lesbian literature.It is also notable for its intense, gothic prose style. The novel employs modernist techniques such as its unusual form or narrative and can be considered metafiction, and it was praised by other modernist authors including T. S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction included in the 1937 edition published by Harcourt, Brace. As a roman à clef, the novel features a thinly veiled portrait of Barnes in the character of Nora Flood, whereas Nora's lover Robin Vote is a composite of Thelma Wood and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
“The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.”
Source: Nightwood
“I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me.”
Source: Nightwood
“I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?
“One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls
“Destiny and history are untidy.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls
“The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?
“A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 7 : Go Down, Matthew
“Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 7 : Go Down, Matthew
“Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?
“What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.”
Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 6 : Where the Tree Falls
Context: 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.
