71+ Donald Barthelme Quotes On Friendship, Education And Not Knowing

Donald Barthelme was an American author and short story writer known for his postmodern works of fiction. His writing style was often characterized by surrealism, irony, and playfulness. He was one of the most important literary figures of the late 20th century, and his works have been praised by many prominent authors. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Donald Barthelme on friendship, education, life.

Top 10 Donald Barthelme Quotes

1. 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.
2. Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.
3. Any genuine work of art generates new work.
4. I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.
5. The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance.
6. Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.
7. The much heaves and palpitates. It is multidirectional and has a mayor.
8. I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
9. The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever.
• Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.
• Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities.
• Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.
• No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.
• I am never needlessly obscure - I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
• There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
• The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.
• Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.
• Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.

Donald Barthelme Quotes About Life

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

Is death that which gives meaning to life? — 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

Donald Barthelme Quotes About Love

Faint equivalents can sometimes be found ... . Or it can be rendered obliquely-an adolescent's mental image of his or her parents making love, which must be something on the order of crocodiles mating. — Donald Barthelme

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

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. — 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

Donald Barthelme Quotes About Not Knowing

It is difficult to keep the public interested. The public demands new wonders piled on new wonders. Often we don't know where our next marvel is coming from. The supply of strange ideas is not endless. — Donald Barthelme

The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do... Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. — Donald Barthelme

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are. — Donald Barthelme

The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention. — Donald Barthelme

The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do. — Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme Famous Quotes And Sayings

I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew. — Donald Barthelme

Capitalism arose and took off its pajamas. Another day, another dollar. Each man is valued at what he will bring in the marketplace. Meaning has been drained from work and assigned instead to remuneration. — Donald Barthelme

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

"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

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

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

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 privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently. — Donald Barthelme

The death of God left the angels in a strange position. — Donald Barthelme

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

See the moon? It hates us. — Donald Barthelme

Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody. — Donald Barthelme

As Jules Renard said, no matter how much care an author takes to write as few books as possible, there will be people who haven't heard of some of them. — Donald Barthelme

"I smell fennel," Launcelot said. "That reminds me, I should tell you I have discovered a specific for maims. You take salt, good-quality river mud, and bee urine, and slather it on the maim and hold it there for two days. Works like a charm. Gathering the bee urine is a bit of a bore." — Donald Barthelme

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart. — Donald Barthelme

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens. — Donald Barthelme

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

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

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

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages. — Donald Barthelme

I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on. — Donald Barthelme

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

How can you be alienated without first having been connected? — 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

The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions. — Donald Barthelme

Some people', Miss R. said,'run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool. — Donald Barthelme

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

There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch. — Donald Barthelme

I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities. — Donald Barthelme

One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless. — Donald Barthelme

The death of God left the angels in a strange position. They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question. One can attempt to imagine the moment. How did they look at the instant the question invaded them, flooding the angelic consciousness, taking hold with terrifying force? The question was, "What are angels?" New to questioning, unaccustomed to terror, unskilled in aloneness, the angels (we assume) fell into despair. — Donald Barthelme

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love...And you can never touch a girl in the same way more than once, twice, or another number of times however much you may wish to hold, wrap, or otherwise fix her hand, or look, or some other quality, or incident, known to you previously. — 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

Write about what you're afraid of. — Donald Barthelme

Will you be wanting to contest the divorce?" I asked Mrs. Davis. "I should think not," she said calmly, "although I suppose on of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce. — 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

Life Lessons by Donald Barthelme

1. Donald Barthelme's work emphasizes the importance of experimentation and playfulness in literature, demonstrating that literature can be both entertaining and thought-provoking.
2. His unique and often surreal writing style serves as a reminder that there are no rules when it comes to writing, and that creativity should be embraced and celebrated.
3. His works also explore the human condition in a way that is both humorous and profound, reminding us of the power of literature to make us think and feel in new ways.