Quote

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

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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
Going
Full
Rapacious
Always
Call
Hankering
Never
Point
Flaming
World
Stuff
Insatiable
Might
Fault
Self
Mouth
Great
Faults
Thing
Mouths

More quotes by Donald Barthelme

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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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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
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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The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
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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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
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The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
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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Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
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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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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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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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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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Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?
Donald Barthelme