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I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.

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
Never
Needlessly
Obscure

More quotes by 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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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
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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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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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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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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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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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
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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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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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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
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
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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?
Donald Barthelme
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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?
Donald Barthelme
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Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
Donald Barthelme
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Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
Donald Barthelme
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Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
Donald Barthelme
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I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.
Donald Barthelme