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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.

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
Imagine
Makes
Better
Feel
Feels
Weren
Always
Stress
Like
Told
People
Hear

More quotes by 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.
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Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
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Write about what you're afraid of.
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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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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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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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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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I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
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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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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
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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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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme
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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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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
Donald Barthelme
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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme