Quote

Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.

Donald Barthelme

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Reporter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Differ
Permitted
Necessary
Love
Kierkegaard

More quotes by Donald Barthelme

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Donald Barthelme
Image
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
Donald Barthelme
Image
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
Donald Barthelme
Image
The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
Donald Barthelme
Image
Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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
Image
Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
Donald Barthelme
Image
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