Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Donald Barthelme, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Donald Barthelme quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 108 Donald Barthelme quotes for you to read and share.
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
Pia was chopping up an enormous cabbage, a cabbage big as a basketball. The cabbage was of an extraordinary size. It was a big cabbage. "That's a big cabbage," Edward said. "Big," Pia said. -- Donald Barthelme
-You are killing me."
" -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes. -- Donald Barthelme
The mind carries you with it, away from what you are supposed to do, toward things that cannot be explained rationally, toward difficulty, lack of clarity, late-afternoon light. -- Donald Barthelme
The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance. -- Donald Barthelme
Your father and I were in the trenches together, in the Great War. That was a war all right. Oh I know there have been other wars since, better-publisized ones, more expensive ones perhaps, but our war is the one I'll always remember. Our war is the one that means war to me. -- Donald Barthelme
And Harold came into Perpetua's apartment.
He said, 'I just want to know one thing. Are you happy?' 'Sure,' Perpetua said. (Donald Barthelme, "Perpetua") -- Donald Barthelme
Have you noticed the weather? asked Thomas. All turned to look for the weather. -- 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 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
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
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
Art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality -- Donald Barthelme
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art. -- Donald Barthelme
How old are you Hogo." "Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant age to be." "You don't mind then. That you are not young." "It has its buggy aspects as what does not?" "You don't mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death." "No, Jane. -- 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
I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities. -- Donald Barthelme
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. -- 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
The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human love, which remains as grisly and golden as ever, no matter what is tattooed upon the warm tympanic page. -- Donald Barthelme
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
I sit down on the curb, outside the Opera. People passing look at me. I will wait here for a hundred years. Or until the hot meat of romance is cooled by the dull gravy of common sense once more -- Donald Barthelme
Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail. -- Donald Barthelme
The thing about books is, there are quite a number you don't have to read. -- 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
They were heading I judged for the Sixth Precinct. Had I had the black hat with me, and sufficient men and horses and lariats and .30-30s, and popular support from the masses and a workable revolutionary ideology and/or a viable myth pattern, I would have rescued them. -- Donald Barthelme
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
The combinatory agility of words," he wrote in "Not-Knowing," "the exponential generation of meaning once they're allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven't yet encountered. -- 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
97. I approached the symbol, with its layers of meaning, but when I touched it, it changed into only a beautiful princess.
98. I threw the beautiful princess headfirst down the mountain to my acquaintances.
99. Who could be relied upon to deal with her. -- Donald Barthelme
Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. -- Donald Barthelme
The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day ... -- Donald Barthelme
There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena. -- Donald Barthelme
A process of accretion. Barnacles growing on a wreck or a rock. I'd rather have a wreck than a ship that sails. Things attach themselves to wrecks. Strange fish find your wreck or rock to be a good feeding ground; after a while you've got a situation with possibilities. -- Donald Barthelme
Truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it. -- 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
The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not. -- Donald Barthelme
A hundred canes shattered in the sun, like a load of antihistamines falling out of an airplane. -- Donald Barthelme
All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities, the note concludes.
This is surely true. Yet the vivacity with which he embraces ruin is unexampled, in my experience. -- 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
The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions. -- Donald Barthelme
I am never needlessly obscure I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure. -- Donald Barthelme
The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon. -- 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
You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were light, I thought, and I thought how good it was of you to do this. We'd never touched before. -- 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 regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats. -- Donald Barthelme
Write about what you're afraid of. -- 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
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
There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising. -- Donald Barthelme
The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do. -- Donald Barthelme
Little is known about her. We are assured, however, that the same damnable involvements that obsess us obsess her too. Copulation. Strangeness. Applause. -- Donald Barthelme
Dun-colored fathers tend to shy at obstacles, and therefore you do not want a father of this color, because life, in one sense, is nothing but obstacles, and his continual shying will reduce your nerves to grease. -- Donald Barthelme
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. -- Donald Barthelme
It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on his ball of half-truths, the earth. -- Donald Barthelme
Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknowing, then, the father proceeds with his instruction. -- Donald Barthelme
The important thing is the educational experience itself - how to survive it. -- Donald Barthelme
It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men. -- Donald Barthelme
Machines are braver than art. -- 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
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
This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor. -- Donald Barthelme
[picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING! ... [casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass" ... -- Donald Barthelme
Any genuine work of art generates new work. -- 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
Immature citizens in several sizes were massed before a large factorylike structure where advanced techniques transformed them into true-thinking right-acting members of the three social classes, lower, middle, and upper middle. -- Donald Barthelme
Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world. -- Donald Barthelme
The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude, as when you attend a funeral and notice that it's being poorly done. -- Donald Barthelme
Well, what shall I do next? What is the next thing demanded of me by history? -- 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
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
Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end. -- Donald Barthelme
Fragments are the only forms I trust. -- Donald Barthelme
Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence. -- Donald Barthelme
All of us ... still believe that the American flag betokens a kind of general righteousness. But I say ... that signs are signs and some of them are lies. -- Donald Barthelme
How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains? -- Donald Barthelme
But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up dangerous heights, let the judgement forbid as it may. -- Donald Barthelme
Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what "right" was. -- Donald Barthelme
Our becoming is done. -- Donald Barthelme
The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude -melancholy sadness- toward it. -- Donald Barthelme
mead for my men! -- Donald Barthelme
MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever. -- Donald Barthelme
Nothing like a suck of the breast. -- Donald Barthelme
Three rebellions ago, the air was fresher. The soft pasting noises of the rebel billposters remind us of Oklahoma, where everything is still the same. -- Donald Barthelme
Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. They've been a laboratory for everybody. -- Donald Barthelme
No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will. -- Donald Barthelme
Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught - prayer, fasting and self-mutilation. -- Donald Barthelme
You get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures ... -- Donald Barthelme
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin. -- Donald Barthelme
The death of God left the angels in a strange position. -- 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
And eloquence, Henry Mackie says, is really all any of us can hope for. -- Donald Barthelme
The writer is [ ... ] the work's way of getting itself written -- Donald Barthelme
See the moon? It hates us. -- Donald Barthelme
It seemed to proclaim itself a mystery, but one there was no point in solving - an ongoing low-grade mystery. -- Donald Barthelme
The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart. -- Donald Barthelme
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. -- 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
I spoke to Sylvia. Do you think this is a good life? -- Donald Barthelme
Strings of language extend in every direction to bind the world into a rushing, ribald whole. -- Donald Barthelme
The world in the evening seems fraught with the absence of promise, if you are a married man. There is nothing to do but go home and drink your nine drinks and forget about it. -- Donald Barthelme
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there. -- Donald Barthelme
Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities. -- Donald Barthelme
How can you be alienated without first having been connected? -- Donald Barthelme
You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you. -- Donald Barthelme
Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced. -- Donald Barthelme
never figured out what sort of animal I was -- Donald Barthelme
