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Famous Donald Barthelme Quotes
“There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.”
“The death of God left the angels in a strange position.”
“Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.”
“And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.”
“How can you be alienated without first having been connected?”
“Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.”
“The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do.”
“Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.”
“I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.”
“The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day.”
“The important thing is the educational experience itself — how to survive it.”
“I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.”
“Is death that which gives meaning to life?”
“The much heaves and palpitates. It is multidirectional and has a mayor.”
“Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.”
“Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.”
“The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions.”
“The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.”
“There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.”