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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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Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Reporter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Point
Horizontal
Speak
Vertical
Art
Line
Things
Progress
Think
Movement
Thinking
Lines
Talk
Purpose
Locating

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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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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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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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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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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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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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I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
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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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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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Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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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.
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Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
Donald Barthelme
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The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
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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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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
Donald Barthelme