Quote

Is death that which gives meaning to life?

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
Gives
Death
Giving
Life
Meaning

More quotes by Donald Barthelme

Image
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.
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
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Donald Barthelme
Image
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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
I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
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
The aim of literature ... 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
Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Donald Barthelme
Image
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?
Donald Barthelme
Image
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme