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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.

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
Many
Merely
Needs
Window
Men
Easier
Example
Attainment
Goal
Incapable
Look
Goals
Looks
Driven
Need
Despair

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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love...And you can never touch a girl in the same way more than once, twice, or another number of times however much you may wish to hold, wrap, or otherwise fix her hand, or look, or some other quality, or incident, known to you previously.
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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.
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Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
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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.
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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
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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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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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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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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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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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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.
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Is death 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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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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