Donald Barthelme Quotes

80 Sourced Quotes

Do you think intelligent life exists outside this bed? one student asked another, confused as to whether she was attending the performance, or part of it.

Donald Barthelme
MAGGIE: Did you have a good time?
HILDA: The affair ran the usual course. Fever, boredom, trapped.
MAGGIE: Hot, rinse, spin dry.

Donald Barthelme
It is the pledges that this place makes to me, pledges that cannot be redeemed, that confuse me later and make me feel I am not getting anywhere. Everything is presented as the result of some knowable process; if I wish to arrive at four I get there by way of two and two. If I wish to burn Moscow the route I must travel has already been marked out by another visitor.

Donald Barthelme
How does one conquer fear, Don B.?
One takes a frog and sews it to one's shoe, he said.
The left or the right?
Don B. gave me a pitying look.
Well, you'd look mighty funny going down the street with only one frog sewed to your shoes, wouldn't you? he said. One frog on each shoe.

Donald Barthelme
As a magician works with the unique compressibility of doves, finding some, losing others in the same silk foulard, so the rebels fold scratchy, relaxed meanings into their smallest actions.

Donald Barthelme
HENRY: 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
[Snow White talking to herself]... No wonder we who are twenty-two don't trust anybody over twelve. That is where you find people who know the score, under twelve. I think I will go out and speak to some eleven-year-olds, now, to refresh myself. Now or soon.

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
—There's a thing the children say.
—What do the children say?
—They say: Will you always love me?
—Always.
—Will you always remember me?
—Always.
—Will you remember me a year from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me two years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me five years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Knock, knock.
—Who's there?
—You see?

Donald Barthelme
We had a conversation the other day with Ming the Merciless, one of the preeminent villains of modern times, whose half-century-long struggle with his opposite number, Flash Gordon, has helped generations of Americans conceptualize the fearsome enchantments of space. We caught up with the veteran malefactor at the Volney, where he greeted us in a turquise-and-gold dressing gown, a black skullcap setting off his striking yellowish pallor. We immediately put our foot in it by addressing him as Mr. Ming
I don't want to be stuffy, he said pleasantly, but that's Emperor Ming, if you don't mind....

Donald Barthelme
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.

Donald Barthelme
Sometimes I see signs on walls saying Kill the Rich, Clem said. And sometimes Kill the Rich has been crossed out and Harm the Rich written underneath. A clear gain for civilization I would say. And the one that says Jean-Paul Sartre Is a Fartre. Something going on there, you must admit. Dim flicker of something....

Donald Barthelme
I didn't go to church because I was a black sheep. There were five children in my family and the males rotated the position of black sheep among us, the oldest one being the black sheep for a while while he was in his DWI period or whatever and then getting grayer as he maybe got a job or was in the service and then finally becoming a white sheep when he got married and had a grandchild. My sister was never a black sheep because she was a girl.

Donald Barthelme
I obey the Commandments, the sensible ones. Where they don't know what they're talking about I ignore them. I keep thinking about the story of the two old women in church listening to the priest discoursing on the dynamics of the married state. At the end of the sermon one turns to the other and says, I wish I knew as little about it as he does.

Donald Barthelme
How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?

Donald Barthelme
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.

Donald Barthelme
Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.

Donald Barthelme
The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

Donald Barthelme
ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD.

Donald Barthelme
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