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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
Gives
Death
Giving
Life
Meaning

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Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
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The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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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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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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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.
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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
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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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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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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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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 important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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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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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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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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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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Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
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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.
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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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