“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.”

Djuna Barnes

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“No man need curing of his individual sickness; his universal malady is what he should look to.”


“There goes the dismantled—Love has fallen off her wall. A religious woman,” he thought to himself, “without the joy and safety of the Catholic faith, which at a pinch covers up the spots on the wall when the family portraits take a slide; take that safety from a woman,” he said to himself, quickening his step to follow her, “and love gets loose and into the rafters. She sees her everywhere,” he added, glancing at Nora as she passed into the dark. “Out looking for what she’s afraid to find—Robin. There goes mother of mischief, running about, trying to get the world home.”


“No matter where and when you meet him you feel that he has come from some place-no matter from what place he has come-some country that he has devoured rather than resided in, some secret land that he has been nourished on but cannot inherit, for the Jew seems to be everythere from nowhere.”


“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.”


“A man's sorrow runs uphill; true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.”


“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.”