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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

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
Facts
Autobiographical
Strain
Fiction
Bits
Fact
Strong

More quotes by 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.
Donald Barthelme
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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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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
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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
Donald Barthelme
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
Donald Barthelme
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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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
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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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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
Donald Barthelme
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
Donald Barthelme
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Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
Donald Barthelme
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
Donald Barthelme
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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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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme