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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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Donald Barthelme
Age: 58 †
Born: 1931
Born: April 7
Died: 1989
Died: July 23
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Reporter
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Thinking
Minded
Divorce
Count
Stick
Sticks
Tiny
Except
Among
Mud

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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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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.
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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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Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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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.
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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.
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Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
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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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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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