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

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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?
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Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
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Is death that which gives meaning to life?
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I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
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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.
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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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Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
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The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
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The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
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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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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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There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
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Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
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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 important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
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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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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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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.
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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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Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
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