Donald Barthelme Quotes
Collection of top 65 famous quotes about Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme Quotes & Sayings
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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
— Donald Barthelme
Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
— Donald Barthelme
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.
— Donald Barthelme
I am never needlessly obscure I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
— Donald Barthelme
Machines are braver than art.
— Donald Barthelme
mead for my men!
— Donald Barthelme
-You are killing me."" -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes. — Donald Barthelme
The thing about books is, there are quite a number you don't have to read.
— Donald Barthelme
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
— Donald Barthelme
It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on his ball of half-truths, the earth.
— Donald Barthelme
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.
— Donald Barthelme
Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
— Donald Barthelme
Fragments are the only forms I trust.
— Donald Barthelme
Our becoming is done.
— Donald Barthelme
Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
— Donald Barthelme
never figured out what sort of animal I was
— Donald Barthelme
Nothing like a suck of the breast.
— Donald Barthelme
Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.
— Donald Barthelme
The present goal of the individual in group enterprises is to avoid dominance; leadership is felt to be a character disorder. — Donald Barthelme
The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon.
— Donald Barthelme
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
— Donald Barthelme
The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
— Donald Barthelme
The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day ...
— Donald Barthelme
The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions.
— Donald Barthelme
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
— Donald Barthelme
The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do.
— Donald Barthelme
![Donald Barthelme Quotes By Donald Barthelme: The writer is [ ... ] the work's](https://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/donald-barthelme-quotes-by-donald-barthelme-1801156.jpg "Donald Barthelme Quotes By Donald Barthelme: The writer is [ ... ] the work's")
The writer is [ ... ] the work's way of getting itself written
— Donald Barthelme
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
— Donald Barthelme
See the moon? It hates us.
— Donald Barthelme
I spoke to Sylvia. Do you think this is a good life?
— Donald Barthelme
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
— Donald Barthelme
A hundred canes shattered in the sun, like a load of antihistamines falling out of an airplane.
— Donald Barthelme
Strings of language extend in every direction to bind the world into a rushing, ribald whole.
— Donald Barthelme
Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.
— Donald Barthelme
The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not.
— Donald Barthelme
We regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats.
— Donald Barthelme
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught - prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
— Donald Barthelme
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.
— Donald Barthelme
Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what "right" was.
— Donald Barthelme
![Donald Barthelme Quotes By Donald Barthelme: [picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING! ... [casual passerby:]](https://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/donald-barthelme-quotes-by-donald-barthelme-203713.jpg "Donald Barthelme Quotes By Donald Barthelme: [picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING! ... [casual passerby:]")
[picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING! ... [casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass" ...
— Donald Barthelme
Can the life of the time be caught in an advertisement? Is that how it is, really, in the meadows of the world?
— Donald Barthelme
No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.
— Donald Barthelme
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.
— Donald Barthelme
It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men.
— Donald Barthelme
You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you.
— Donald Barthelme
And eloquence, Henry Mackie says, is really all any of us can hope for.
— Donald Barthelme
Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
— Donald Barthelme
Write about what you're afraid of.
— Donald Barthelme
Any genuine work of art generates new work.
— Donald Barthelme
It seemed to proclaim itself a mystery, but one there was no point in solving - an ongoing low-grade mystery.
— Donald Barthelme
This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.
— Donald Barthelme
You get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures ...
— Donald Barthelme
Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.
— Donald Barthelme
Truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.
— Donald Barthelme
How can you be alienated without first having been connected?
— Donald Barthelme
Art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality
— Donald Barthelme
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.
— Donald Barthelme
How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?
— Donald Barthelme
MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever.
— Donald Barthelme
