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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.
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
Art
Permit
Without
Crucial
Made
Invention
Mind
Possibility
Unanticipated
Would
Move
Engendered
Knowing
Scanning
Moving
Permits
Process
Directions
More quotes by Donald Barthelme
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
Donald Barthelme
I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
Donald Barthelme
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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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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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
Donald Barthelme
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
Donald Barthelme
Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
Donald Barthelme
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
Donald Barthelme
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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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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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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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.
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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
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
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
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
