Top Donald Barthelme Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Donald Barthelme Biography

Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, was managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of Fiction (with Mark Mirsky and the assistance of Max and Marianne Frisch), and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Read about Donald Barthelme in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Donald Barthelme Quotes

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

Anticipate, Anticipation, Jiggles, Possibilities, Possibility, Too Much

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.

Lottery, Lottery Ticket, Operator, Spots, Ticket, Tickets

The world is sagging, snagging, scaling, spalling, pilling, pinging, pitting, warping, checking, fading, chipping, cracking, yellowing, leaking, stalling, shrinking, and in dynamic unbalance.

Checking, Fading, Sagging, Shrinking, Snagging, Yellowing

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

Class, Classes, Sermons, Whiskey, Wine

Write about what you're afraid of.

Afraid, Write, Writing

Naked girls with the heads of Marx and Malraux prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights, tried to give them a little joie de vivre but maybe it didn't take, their constant bickering and smallness, it's like a stroke of lightning, the world reminds you of its power, tracheotomies right and left, I am spinning, my pretty child, don't scratch, pick up your feet, the long nights, spent most of my time listening, this is a test of the system, this is only a test.

Children, Girl, Long, Night, Prone, Smallness

Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.

Home, Snow, Take, White, Worse

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

Advertisement, Advertising, Life, Meadows, World

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

Day, Knowing, Live, The End Of The Day, Way To Live

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.

Art, Long, Nothing, Simple, Virtues

MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever.

Forever, Mtv, Ruined, Surrealism

Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.

Action, Doubt, Ends, Fear, Mover, Necessary

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.

American, Formal, Laboratory, Painters, War, World

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.

Author, Book, People, Renard, Write, Writing

How can you be alienated without first having been connected?

Alienated, Connected, Firsts, Having

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.

Achieve, Blurred, Common, Quite, Success

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.

Action, Although, Arguing, Believe, Bite, Imperfect

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.

Crocodiles, Found, Making, Making Love, Order, Parent

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.

Davis, Divorce, Fun, Think, Thinking, Wanting

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

Art, Generates, Genuine, New Work, Work

1