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

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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.
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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.
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Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
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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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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
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The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
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