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

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
Creation
Strange
Fur
Break
Breaks
Literature
Covered
Heart
Aim
Object
Objects

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Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
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Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?
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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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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.
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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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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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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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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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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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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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The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
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My mother studied English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, where my father studied architecture. She was a great influence in all sorts of ways, a wicked wit.
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Write about what you're afraid of.
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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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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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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