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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.
Donald Barthelme
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Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
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Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Rounds
Severely
Object
Fur
Objects
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Creation
Breaks
Strange
Blank
Break
Covered
Literature
Round
Examiner
Heart
Aim
Grandly
More quotes by Donald Barthelme
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
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
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.
Donald Barthelme
Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?
Donald Barthelme
Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Donald Barthelme
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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
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
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
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
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Donald Barthelme
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
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
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
Donald Barthelme
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
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
Donald Barthelme
