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

Donald Barthelme

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Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Reporter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Left
Angels
Angel
Strange
Position
Death

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Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most do not. The sense of community falls victim to this struggle.
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Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
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Now it is necessary to court her, and win her, and put on this clean dressing gown, and cut my various nails, and drink something that will kill the millions of germs in my mouth, and say something flattering, and be witty and bonny, and hale and kinky, all just to ease this wrinkle in the groin. It seems a high price.
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I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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His examiner said severely: Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature. The aim of literature, Baskerville replied grandly, is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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Write about what you're afraid of.
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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
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The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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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.
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He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it... he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
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Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
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Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that -- one need merely look out of the window, for example.
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People always like to hear that they're under stress, makes them feel better. You can imagine what they'd feel if they were told they weren't under stress.
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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
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I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.
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