Quote

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.

Donald Barthelme

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Reporter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Example
Attainment
Goal
Incapable
Look
Goals
Looks
Driven
Need
Despair
Many
Merely
Needs
Window
Men
Easier

More quotes by Donald Barthelme

Image
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
Image
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.
Donald Barthelme
Image
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
Donald Barthelme
Image
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.
Donald Barthelme
Image
The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
Donald Barthelme
Image
The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
Donald Barthelme
Image
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Will you be wanting to contest the divorce? I asked Mrs. Davis. I should think not, she said calmly, although I suppose on of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce.
Donald Barthelme