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Donald Barthelme Short Quotes
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Doubt is a necessary precondition to meaningful action.
Donald Barthelme
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How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?
Donald Barthelme
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How can you be alienated without first having been connected?
Donald Barthelme
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Best not to anticipate too much... it jiggles the possibilities.
Donald Barthelme
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There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.
Donald Barthelme
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ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD.
Donald Barthelme
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No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.
Donald Barthelme
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I am never needlessly obscure—I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
Donald Barthelme
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
Donald Barthelme
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The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.
Donald Barthelme
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[picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING!....[casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass"....
Donald Barthelme
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Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.
Donald Barthelme
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Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.
Donald Barthelme
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The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day...
Donald Barthelme
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Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.
Donald Barthelme
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Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.
Donald Barthelme
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—Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard?
—Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.
Donald Barthelme
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Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
Donald Barthelme
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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?
Donald Barthelme
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Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.
Donald Barthelme
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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
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Self-criticism sessions were held, but these produced more criticism than could usefully be absorbed or accomodated.
Donald Barthelme
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"Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out."
Donald Barthelme
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The present goal of the individual in group enterprises is to avoid dominance; leadership is felt to be a character disorder.
Donald Barthelme
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Oh, there is nothing better than intelligent conversation except thrashing about in bed with a naked girl and Egmont Light Italic.
Donald Barthelme
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MAGGIE:
Did you have a good time?
HILDA:
The affair ran the usual course. Fever, boredom, trapped.
MAGGIE:
Hot, rinse, spin dry.
Donald Barthelme
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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
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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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.
Donald Barthelme
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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
Quote of the day
A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.
Robert Burton
Donald Barthelme
Creative Commons
Born:
April 7, 1931
Died:
July 23, 1989
(aged 58)
Donald Barthelme Quotes
Donald Barthelme Short Quotes
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