Donald Barthelme quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Donald Barthelme on Wise Famous Quotes.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

I am never needlessly obscure I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.

Machines are braver than art.

mead for my men!

-You are killing me."
" -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes.

The thing about books is, there are quite a number you don't have to read.

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on his ball of half-truths, the earth.

I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.

Fragments are the only forms I trust.

Our becoming is done.

Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.

never figured out what sort of animal I was

Nothing like a suck of the breast.

Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.

The present goal of the individual
in group enterprises is to avoid dominance; leadership is felt to be a character disorder.

The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon.

Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day ...

The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions.

There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.

The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do.

The writer is [ ... ] the work's way of getting itself written

The death of God left the angels in a strange position.

See the moon? It hates us.

Well, what shall I do next? What is the next thing demanded of me by history?

I spoke to Sylvia. Do you think this is a good life?

I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.

A hundred canes shattered in the sun, like a load of antihistamines falling out of an airplane.

Strings of language extend in every direction to bind the world into a rushing, ribald whole.

Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.

The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not.

We regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats.

Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught - prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what "right" was.

[picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING! ... [casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass" ...

The important thing is the educational experience itself - how to survive it.

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.

Can the life of the time be caught in an advertisement? Is that how it is, really, in the meadows of the world?

No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.

The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.

It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men.

You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you.

And eloquence, Henry Mackie says, is really all any of us can hope for.

Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.

Write about what you're afraid of.

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

It seemed to proclaim itself a mystery, but one there was no point in solving - an ongoing low-grade mystery.

This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.

You get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures ...

Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.

Truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.

How can you be alienated without first having been connected?

Art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality

Three rebellions ago, the air was fresher. The soft pasting noises of the rebel billposters remind us of Oklahoma, where everything is still the same.

How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?

Have you noticed the weather? asked Thomas. All turned to look for the weather.

MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever.

Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.

The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude, as when you attend a funeral and notice that it's being poorly done.