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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.

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
Great
Architecture
Way
University
English
Drama
Pennsylvania
Influence
Studied
Ways
Sorts
Father
Wit
Mother
Wicked

More quotes by Donald Barthelme

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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.
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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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.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
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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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Donald Barthelme
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I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
Donald Barthelme
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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme
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The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
Donald Barthelme
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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?
Donald Barthelme
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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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I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew.
Donald Barthelme
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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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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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Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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