Donald Barthelme Quotes
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
Quotes to Explore
'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
Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.
Donald Barthelme
-There’s a thing the children say. -What do the children say? -They say: Will you always love me? -Always. -Will you always remember me? -Always. -Will you remember me a year from now? -Yes, I will. -Will you remember me two years from now? -Yes, I will. -Will you remember me five years from now? -Yes, I will. -Knock, knock. -Who’s there? -You see?
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
HENRY: 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
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
As a magician works with the unique compressibility of doves, finding some, losing others in the same silk foulard, so the rebels fold scratchy, relaxed meanings into their smallest actions.
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
Oh, there is nothing better than intelligent conversation except thrashing about in bed with a naked girl and Egmont Light Italic.
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
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 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
