Quotes by Donald Barthelme

About Donald Barthelme:

is about the author, Donald Barthelme Jr. For his father, the architect, see Donald Barthelme (architect).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

Donald Barthelme

This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.

Donald Barthelme

But the lie had to be a good one, because if your lie is badly done it makes everyone feel wretched, liar and lied-to alike plunged into the deepest lackadaisy, and everyone just feels like going into the other room and drinking a glass of water, or ...

Donald Barthelme

There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbi...

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

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

Yes, the saint was underrated quite a bit, then, mostly by people who didn’t like things that were ineffable… …a lot of people don’t like things that are unearthly, the things of this earth are good enough for them, and they don’t mind tell...

Donald Barthelme

The world in the evening seems fraught with the absence of promise, if you are a married man. There is nothing to do but go home and drink your nine drinks and forget about it.

Donald Barthelme

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

Donald Barthelme

Fragments are the only forms I trust.

Donald Barthelme

the hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger chanting...

Donald Barthelme

Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.

Donald Barthelme

I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Donald Barthelme

There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomen...

Donald Barthelme

I wanted to say a certain thing to a certain man, a certain true thing that had crept into my head. I opened my head, at the place provided, and proceeded to pronounce the true thing that lay languishing there—that is, proceeded to propel that true...

Donald Barthelme

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

Donald Barthelme

He gives her his Art History lecture. ‘Then you get Mo-net and Ma-net, that’s a little tricky, Mo-net was the one did all the water lilies and shit, his colors were blues and greens, Ma-net was the one did Bareass on the Grass and shit, his color...

Donald Barthelme

He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it... he is insane because when ...

Donald Barthelme

See the moon? It hates us.

Donald Barthelme

The death of God left the angels in a strange position.

Donald Barthelme

Author Bio

  • NameDonald Barthelme
  • DescriptionAmerican writer, editor, and professor
  • BornApril 7, 1931
  • DiedJuly 23, 1989
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Journalist; Novelist; Reporter
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship