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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.
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
The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
Donald Barthelme
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
Write about what you're afraid of.
Donald Barthelme
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
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
Donald Barthelme
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
Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
Donald Barthelme
Is death that which gives meaning to life?
Donald Barthelme
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
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
Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard? Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Donald Barthelme
The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
Donald Barthelme
The death of God left the angels in a strange position.
Donald Barthelme
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.
Donald Barthelme
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.
Donald Barthelme
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
The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
Donald Barthelme
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
Donald Barthelme
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.
Donald Barthelme