Donald Barthelme Quotes & Sayings

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

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages. — Donald Barthelme

Your father and I were in the trenches together, in the Great War. That was a war all right. Oh I know there have been other wars since, better-publisized ones, more expensive ones perhaps, but our war is the one I'll always remember. Our war is the one that means war to me. — Donald Barthelme

I visit my assistant mistress. "Well, Azalea," I say, sitting in the best chair, "what has happened to you since my last visit?" Azalea tells me what happened to her. She has covered a sofa, and written a novel. Jack has behaved badly. Roger has lost his job (replaced by an electric eye). Gigi's children are in the hospital being detoxified, all three. Azalea herself is dying of love. I stroke her buttocks, which are perfection, if you can have perfection, under the capitalistic system. "It is better to marry that to burn," St. Paul says, but St. Paul is largely discredited now, for the toughness of his views does not accord with the experience of advanced industrial societies. — 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 whatever is available there, whereas if you can lie really well then get dynamite results, 35 percent report increased intellectual understanding, awareness, insight, 40 percent report more tolerance, acceptance of others, liking for self, 29 percent report they receive more personal and more confidential information from people and that others become more warm and supportive toward them
all in consequence of a finely orchestrated, carefully developed untruth. — Donald Barthelme

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. — Donald Barthelme

We could unleash all this technology at once. You can imagine what would happen then. But that's not the interesting thing."
"What is the interesting thing?"
"The interesting thing is that we have a moral sense. It is on punched cards, perhaps the most advanced and sensitive moral sense the world has ever known."
"Because it is on punched cards?"
"It considers all considerations in endless and subtle detail," he said. "It even quibbles. With this great new moral tool, how can we go wrong? I confidently predict that, although we could employ all this splendid new weaponry I've been telling you about, we're not going to do it. — Donald Barthelme

No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will. — Donald Barthelme

mead for my men! — Donald Barthelme

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

I met you under the balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, and with sexual deprivation, but now that your visit to Bergen has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appropriate. Removal of the balloon was easy; trailer trucks carried away the depleted fabric, which is now stored in West Virginia, awaiting some other time of unhappiness, some time, perhaps, when we are angry with one another. — Donald Barthelme

But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up dangerous heights, let the judgement forbid as it may. — Donald Barthelme

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

How old are you Hogo." "Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant age to be." "You don't mind then. That you are not young." "It has its buggy aspects as what does not?" "You don't mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death." "No, Jane. — 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

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

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

Art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality — Donald Barthelme

The mind carries you with it, away from what you are supposed to do, toward things that cannot be explained rationally, toward difficulty, lack of clarity, late-afternoon light. — Donald Barthelme

You told me that Kafka was not a thinker, and that a "genetic" approach to his work would disclose that much of it was only a kind of very imaginative whining. That was during the period when you were going in for wrecking operations, feeling, I suppose, that the integrity of your own mental processes was best maintained by a series of strong, unforgiving attacks. You made quite an impression on everyone, in those days: you ruffled blouse, you long magenta skirt slit to the knee, the dagger thrust into your boot. "Is that a metaphor?" I asked, pointing to the dagger; you shook your head, smiled, said no. — Donald Barthelme

Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence. — Donald Barthelme

Three rebellions ago, the air was fresher. The soft pasting noises of the rebel billposters remind us of Oklahoma, where everything is still the same. — Donald Barthelme

They were heading I judged for the Sixth Precinct. Had I had the black hat with me, and sufficient men and horses and lariats and .30-30s, and popular support from the masses and a workable revolutionary ideology and/or a viable myth pattern, I would have rescued them. — Donald Barthelme

A hundred canes shattered in the sun, like a load of antihistamines falling out of an airplane. — 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, sumbitch. — Donald Barthelme

Of course we had hoped that he would take up his sword as part of the President's war on poetry. The time is ripe for that. The root causes of poetry have been studied and studied. And now that we know that pockets of poetry still exist in our great country, especially in the large urban centers, we ought to be able to wash it out totally in one generation, if we put our backs into it. — Donald Barthelme

The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude -melancholy sadness- toward it. — Donald Barthelme

I sit down on the curb, outside the Opera. People passing look at me. I will wait here for a hundred years. Or until the hot meat of romance is cooled by the dull gravy of common sense once more — Donald Barthelme

It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on his ball of half-truths, the earth. — Donald Barthelme

Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what "right" was. — Donald Barthelme

All of us ... still believe that the American flag betokens a kind of general righteousness. But I say ... that signs are signs and some of them are lies. — Donald Barthelme

-It is true that I am part of the laughing-aristocrat structure, Charles said. I don't mean I am one of them. I mean I am their creature. They hold me in thrall.
Laughing aristocrats who invented the cost-plus contract . . .
Laughing aristocrats who invented the real estate broker . . .
Laughing aristocrats who invented Formica . . .
Laughing aristocrats wiping their surfaces clean with a damp cloth . . .
Charles poured himself another brilliant green Heineken.
-To the struggle! — Donald Barthelme

You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were light, I thought, and I thought how good it was of you to do this. We'd never touched before. — Donald Barthelme

What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature ... (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms). — Donald Barthelme

Our becoming is done. — Donald Barthelme

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

And Harold came into Perpetua's apartment.
He said, 'I just want to know one thing. Are you happy?' 'Sure,' Perpetua said. (Donald Barthelme, "Perpetua") — Donald Barthelme

I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities. — Donald Barthelme

New artists have been obtained. These do not object to, and indeed argue enthusiastically for, the rationalization process. Production is up. Quality-control devices have been installed at those points where the interests of artists and audiences intersect. Shipping and distribution have been improved out of all recognition. (It is in this area, they say in Paraguay, that traditional practices were most blameworthy.) The rationalized art is dispatched from central art dumps to regional art dumps, and from there into the lifestreams of cities. Each citizen is given as much art as his system can tolerate. — Donald Barthelme

Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world. — Donald Barthelme

A process of accretion. Barnacles growing on a wreck or a rock. I'd rather have a wreck than a ship that sails. Things attach themselves to wrecks. Strange fish find your wreck or rock to be a good feeding ground; after a while you've got a situation with possibilities. — Donald Barthelme

Have you noticed the weather? asked Thomas. All turned to look for the weather. — Donald Barthelme

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

I noticed that he was an Irish setter, rust-colored. He noticed that I was a Welsh sculptor, buff-colored (no, really, what did he notice? how does he think?) I reflected that he was probably a nice dog from a good home (bourgeois dog) but with certain unfortunate habits like jumping on people from high windows (rationalization: he is a member of the television generation and thus -) — Donald Barthelme

Best not to anticipate too much ... it jiggles the possibilities. — Donald Barthelme

We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant) but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of "sense" of what is going on. This "sense" is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves looking at them and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect, but of having read them, of having "completed" them. — Donald Barthelme

Let us suppose that someone is writing a story. From the world of conventional signs he takes an azalea bush, plants it in a pleasant park. He takes a gold pocket watch from the world of conventional signs and places it under the azalea bush. He takes from the same rich source a handsome thief and a chastity belt, places the thief in the chastity belt and lays him tenderly under the azalea, not neglecting to wind the gold pocket watch so that its ticking will, at length, awaken the now-sleeping thief. From the Sarah Lawrence campus he borrows a pair of seniors, Jacqueline and Jemima, and sets them to walking in the vicinity of the azalea bush and the handsome, chaste thief. Jacqueline and Jemima have just failed the Graduate Record Examination and are cursing God in colorful Sarah Lawrence language. What happens next? Of course, I don't know. — Donald Barthelme

I spoke to Sylvia. Do you think this is a good life? — Donald Barthelme

Well, what shall I do next? What is the next thing demanded of me by history? — Donald Barthelme

Some people', Miss R. said,'run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool. — Donald Barthelme

This is one of the most crucial things that the newcomer needs to know about Barthelme. Though his stuff is sometimes difficult to puncture, and sometimes difficult to follow, while you're finding your way, he's always grinning at you in a warm and very compassionate way. The reader gets the feeling that the author is a nice man. That he knows when he's being difficult and when he's full of shit. Knows how much of this and how much of that you can actually take. He differs from some of his contemporaries, and from many other forgers of new prose styles, in that he doesn't ever give off the impression that he takes himself overseriously, and he seems genuinely to care whether or not his work is being read by you. He is a social writer. A writer who seems to be in the next room, waiting for you to finish and tell him what you thought. — Donald Barthelme

Driving Horace and Margot smoothly to the Armory, the new cabdriver thought about basketball.
Why do they always applaud the man who makes the shot?
Why don't they applaud the ball?
It is the ball that actually goes into the net.
The man doesn't go into the net.
Never have I seen a man going into the net. — Donald Barthelme

It seemed to proclaim itself a mystery, but one there was no point in solving - an ongoing low-grade mystery. — Donald Barthelme

[picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING! ... [casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass" ... — Donald Barthelme

- What do the children say?
- 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?
("Great Days," Forty Stories) — Donald Barthelme

Irruption of the magical in the life of Snow White: Snow White knows a singing bone. The singing bone has told her various stories which have left her troubled and confused: of a bear transformed into a king's son, of an immense treasure at the bottom of a brook, of a crystal casket in which there is a cap that makes the wearer invisible. This must not continue. The behavior of the bone is unacceptable. The bone must be persuaded to confine itself to events and effects susceptible of confirmation by the instrumentarium of the physical sciences. Someone must reason with the bone. — Donald Barthelme

One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless. — Donald Barthelme

Immature citizens in several sizes were massed before a large factorylike structure where advanced techniques transformed them into true-thinking right-acting members of the three social classes, lower, middle, and upper middle. — Donald Barthelme

Strings of language extend in every direction to bind the world into a rushing, ribald whole. — Donald Barthelme

The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude, as when you attend a funeral and notice that it's being poorly done. — Donald Barthelme

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

Is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. — Donald Barthelme

Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that
one need merely look out of the window, for example. — Donald Barthelme

How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains? — Donald Barthelme

The important thing is the educational experience itself - how to survive it. — Donald Barthelme

Hubert complains that the electric wastebasket has been overheating. I haven't noticed it but that's what Hubert says and Hubert is rarely wrong about things that don't matter. The electric wastebasket is a security item. Papers dropped into it are destroyed instantly. How the electric wastebasket accomplishes this is not known. An intimidation followed by a demoralization eventuating in a disintegration, one assumes. It is not emptied. There are not even ashes. — Donald Barthelme

Nothing like a suck of the breast. — Donald Barthelme

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin. — Donald Barthelme

Why are we fighting them?
They're mad. We're sane.
How do we know?
That we're sane?
Yes.
Am I sane?
To all appearances.
And you, do you consider yourself sane?
I do.
Well, there you have it.
But don't they also consider themselves sane?
I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane.
How must that make them feel?
Terrible, I should think. They must fight ever more fiercely, in order to deny what they know to be true. That they are not sane. — 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 he loved you, you didn't notice. — 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

It is difficult to keep the public interested. The public demands new wonders piled on new wonders. Often we don't know where our next marvel is coming from. The supply of strange ideas is not endless. — Donald Barthelme

The combinatory agility of words," he wrote in "Not-Knowing," "the exponential generation of meaning once they're allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven't yet encountered. — Donald Barthelme

never figured out what sort of animal I was — Donald Barthelme

Little is known about her. We are assured, however, that the same damnable involvements that obsess us obsess her too. Copulation. Strangeness. Applause. — Donald Barthelme

Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. — Donald Barthelme

The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do ... Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. — Donald Barthelme

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

We regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats. — Donald Barthelme

Miss Mandible wants to make love to me but she hesitates because I am officially a child; I am, according to the records, according to the gradebook on her desk, according to the card index in the principal's office, eleven years old. There is a misconception here, one that I haven't quite managed to get cleared up yet. I am in fact thirty-five, I've been in the Army, I am six feet one, I have hair in the appropriate places, my voice is a barritone, I know very well what to do with Miss Mandible if she ever makes up her mind. — Donald Barthelme

-You are killing me."
" -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes. — Donald Barthelme

I smell fennel," Launcelot said. "That reminds me, I should tell you I have discovered a specific for maims. You take salt, good-quality river mud, and bee urine, and slather it on the maim and hold it there for two days. Works like a charm. Gathering the bee urine is a bit of a bore. — Donald Barthelme

Clean your face," I said to the child. "It's dirty." "It's not," the child said. "By God it is," I said, "filth adheres in ine areas which I shall enumerate." "That is because of the dough," the child said. "We were taking death masks." "Dough!" I exclaimed, shocked at the idea that the child had wasted flour and water and no doubt paper too in this lightsome pastime, taking death masks. "Death!" I exclaimed for added emphasis. "What do you know of death?" "It is the end of the world," the child said, "for the death-visited individual. The world ends," the child said, "when you turn out your eyes." This was true, I could not dispute it. I returned to the main point. "Your father is telling you to wash your face," I said, locating myself in the abstract where I was more comfortable. — Donald Barthelme

See the moon? It hates us. — Donald Barthelme

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. — Donald Barthelme

The writer is [ ... ] the work's way of getting itself written — 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

Mindy Sue, you are a pretty, lively, successful female, fluent in French and German. You are a professional woman but also sportif. You care buckets, I can see that. How did you get yourself in this terrible predicament? How did you become a four-line seventy-five-cents-a-word advertisement in the back pages of The New York Review of Books? — Donald Barthelme

97. I approached the symbol, with its layers of meaning, but when I touched it, it changed into only a beautiful princess.
98. I threw the beautiful princess headfirst down the mountain to my acquaintances.
99. Who could be relied upon to deal with her. — Donald Barthelme

Machines are braver than art. — Donald Barthelme

You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you. — 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 trueness, that felicitous trularity, from its place inside my head out into world life. The certain man stood waiting to receive it. His face reflected an eager accepting-ness. Everything was right. I propelled, using my mind, my mouth, all my muscles. I propelled. I propelled and propelled. I felt trularity inside my head moving slowly through the passage provided (stained like the caves of Lascaux with garlic, antihistamines, Berloiz, a history, a history) toward its debut on the world stage. Past my teeth, with their little brown sweaters knitted of gin and cigar smoke, toward its leap to critical scrutiny. Past my lips, with their tendency to flake away in cold weather - — Donald Barthelme

And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love. — 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

Fragments are the only forms I trust. — Donald Barthelme

Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknowing, then, the father proceeds with his instruction. — Donald Barthelme

Dun-colored fathers tend to shy at obstacles, and therefore you do not want a father of this color, because life, in one sense, is nothing but obstacles, and his continual shying will reduce your nerves to grease. — Donald Barthelme

Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced. — Donald Barthelme

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