Donald Barthelme Quotes
The actors feel that the music played before the curtain rises will put the audience in the wrong mood. The playwright suggests that the (purposefully lugubrious) music be played at twice-speed. This peps it up somewhat while retaining its essentially dark and gloomy character. The actors listen carefully, and are pleased.

Quotes to Explore
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I shouldn't say this, but I always love the sidekicks. I want to do a leading-lady role in a film - absolutely. But I find that a lot of times I get attracted to the sidekick role. They stand out a little more because they're quirkier, they're funnier, they're crazier.
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My dad and I would watch Ray Lewis a lot. His tenacity, and he was everywhere. I wanted that mindset, too.
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My mom, she's the strict one. If we did something bad, we'd get a whippin' but nothing too bad.
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I always tell people I went to the Harvard School of Comedy in front of America.
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The real drawback to the simple life is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time.
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Polls that have been taken by kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers indicate that 30 percent of the kids have been deprived in some way so that they are physically unable to keep up with the class.
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I put Tabasco sauce over everything. Or I put it on pretty much anything that wouldn't taste gross - I mean, I wouldn't put it on salad, but I like it on fried chicken, nachos... a lot of stuff.
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Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.
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I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once - I've been working on three different novels. When I get stuck on one, I hop back and forth.
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I love Dr. Hauschka's blue mascara. It's not so blue that it's like, 'What's wrong with you?' It's more like a secret that you're wearing it.
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I've been grateful that 'Time's' reach and mandate is so broad; anything you're interested in, you can usually write about.
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To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.
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In Europe, the big word is tolerance. You tolerate everything.
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I want to, at the end of the day, be able to say, 'I am a runner.'
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I was in Vietnam, and I was exposed to Agent Orange. And there's a high relationship between people that were exposed to Agent Orange and the kind of lymphoma that I had. The prostate cancer was genetic in my family. My father had prostate cancer, my - three of my four uncles had prostate cancer.
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A man with a million dollars can be as happy nowadays as though he were rich.
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When something's good, I'm not an over-celebrator.
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Tell a man that he is putting on a stage performance in order to get what he wants, and he will irritably reject your observation. Why? Because most people go through life as cunning actors with a permanent horror of getting found out.
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If anyone can crack the publicity nut and figure out how to not come across hammy and contrived, I'd love to talk to them.
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Americans, among the marryingest people in the world, are also the divorcingest.
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We are saying that when our nation targets law enforcement efforts at someone's appearance or what neighborhood they live in or what job they do, it is not living up to our nation's basic ideals.
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Doing good isn't that hard. It's just doing a lot of good that is very hard. If your aims are modest, you can accomplish an awful lot. When your aims become elevated beyond a reasonable level, you not only don't accomplish much, you can cause a great deal of damage.
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The average member of the public thinks of 'business' as an impersonal corporate entity owned by the very rich and managed by overpaid executives. There is an almost total failure to appreciate that 'business' actually embraces - in one way or another - most Americans.
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The actors feel that the music played before the curtain rises will put the audience in the wrong mood. The playwright suggests that the (purposefully lugubrious) music be played at twice-speed. This peps it up somewhat while retaining its essentially dark and gloomy character. The actors listen carefully, and are pleased.