Donald Barthelme Short Quotes

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Doubt is a necessary precondition to meaningful action.

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

Donald Barthelme
How can you be alienated without first having been connected?

Donald Barthelme
Best not to anticipate too much... it jiggles the possibilities.

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

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

Donald Barthelme
No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.

Donald Barthelme
I am never needlessly obscure—I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.

Donald Barthelme
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.

Donald Barthelme
The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.

Donald Barthelme
[picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING!....[casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass"....

Donald Barthelme
Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.

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

Donald Barthelme
The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day...

Donald Barthelme
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

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

Donald Barthelme
—Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard?
—Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.

Donald Barthelme
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

Donald Barthelme
Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?

Donald Barthelme
Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.

Donald Barthelme
Can the life of the time be caught in an advertisement? Is that how it is, really, in the meadows of the world?

Donald Barthelme
Self-criticism sessions were held, but these produced more criticism than could usefully be absorbed or accomodated.

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
The present goal of the individual in group enterprises is to avoid dominance; leadership is felt to be a character disorder.

Donald Barthelme
Oh, there is nothing better than intelligent conversation except thrashing about in bed with a naked girl and Egmont Light Italic.

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
I believed that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Donald Barthelme
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.

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
But I think everyone should have a little philosophy, Thomas said. It helps, a little. It helps. It is good. It is about half as good as music.

Donald Barthelme