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Is death that which gives meaning to life?

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
Meaning
Gives
Death
Giving
Life

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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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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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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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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
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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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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
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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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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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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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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.
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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 am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
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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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Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
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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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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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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme