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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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Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Reporter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Always
Achieve
Never
Sort
Quite
Situation
Middling
Common
Blurred
Success
Fortunately
Everything
Absolutely
Thing
Failure
More quotes by Donald Barthelme
The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme
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
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
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
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
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
Donald Barthelme
Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Donald Barthelme
Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Donald Barthelme
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.
Donald Barthelme
Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.
Donald Barthelme
The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
Donald Barthelme
The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
Donald Barthelme
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
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme
Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
Donald Barthelme
Is death that which gives meaning to life?
Donald Barthelme
I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
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.
Donald Barthelme
