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Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

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
Found
Writing
Middles
Endings
Elusive
Nowhere
Begin
Worst

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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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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.
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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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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.
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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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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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
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Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
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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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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.
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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
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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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme