Donald Barthelme - White Quotes

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The new thing, a great banality in white, off-white and poor-white, leaned up against the wall. Interesting, we said. It's poor, Snow White said. Poor, poor. Yes, Paul said, one of my poorer things I think. Not so poor of course as yesterday's, poorer on the other hand than some, she said. Yes, Paul said, it has some of the qualities of poorness. Especially poor in the lower left-hand corner, she said. Yes, Paul said, I would go so far as to hurl it into the marketplace. They're getting poorer, she said. Poorer and poorer, Paul said with satisfaction, descending to unexplored depths of poorness where no human intelligence has ever been. … Sublimely poor, she murmured. Wallpaper, he said.

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
[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
"Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out."

Donald Barthelme
We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant) but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of sense of what is going on. This sense is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves—looking at them and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect, but of having read them, of having completed them.

Donald Barthelme