Donald Barthelme Quotes
His examiner...said severely: 'Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature.' 'The aim of literature,' Baskerville replied grandly, 'is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.'

Quotes to Explore
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If someone is sad, they put on a song, or if someone wants to rock out, and they want to get into a good mood, they put on music. Just being able to be a part of something like that I feel like was my ultimate push to do music.
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It's not just the actor in front of the camera. And it's important to have respect for all those people that work behind the camera.
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We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
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The old series of sittings with Mrs. Piper convinced me of survival for reasons which I should find it hard to formulate in any strict fashion, but that was their distinct effect.
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A Tea Party tidal wave is coming.
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I know exactly what it's like to stand on top of a tall building or in a high place and look down and go, 'Ohhhh my God.' I try to get into that place every time I write a scene like that. And definitely when I write the action scenes, I get overheated and my heart goes really fast. I get very involved.
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You try to do what you can to bring harmony wherever you go.
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There's a group of people - maybe the secular Taliban is a good name for them - who have morphed this idea, that you have to accept my values being every bit as cherished as your values. That's not tolerance... There are too many things in this world which we sit back and tolerate.
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In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
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The song 'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.
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Sometimes my family got me in the door. Somebody would say, 'Bruce Dern's daughter - sure I'd like to meet her.' It was a point of interest. But after five minutes of talking about my father, I still had to read for the part.
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I wouldn't call myself religious. I'm spiritual. Everybody's a bit more so as you get older. I'm a cultural Catholic; it's inescapable, but I think I have to believe.
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Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.
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Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
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As a writer, Chris Columbus was a big influence. 'The Goonies' was the first movie I ever saw that kids speak normally and not imagined how kids would talk. Always a big fan of Chris Columbus' dialogue and storytelling.
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I like change, and I like being in the middle of change.
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Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop.
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My accent is... sort of an Edinburgh sort of soft southwest Scottish accent. It could almost be English.
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I would break a lot of cymbals. You whack the cymbals hard enough, and they will crack in half. Drums are not actually as sturdy as they look. They're actually somewhat fragile instruments.
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Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. - This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.
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I am just back from South Sudan, one of the world's most fragile nations. For years, I have been moved by the kind people who maintain hope that they will live to see peace. My heart has ached for them, as they have endured pain and violence that make such hope feel out of reach.
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Let the radiance of my enthusiasms envelop the poor courtyard and the bare classroom. Let my heart be a stronger column and my goodwill purer gold than the columns and gold of rich schools.
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I also believe that using polo as a platform to give back is a very humble way to position this sport, because people sometimes look at this sport as a little bit snobby. So I love to use polo as a platform to help.
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His examiner...said severely: 'Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature.' 'The aim of literature,' Baskerville replied grandly, 'is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.'