Quotes from Donald Barthelme

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

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.

See the moon? It hates us.

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

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

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

I obey the Commandments, the sensible ones. Where they dont know what theyre talking about I ignore them. I keep thinking about the story of the two old women in church listening to the priest discoursing on the dynamics of the married state. At the end of the sermon one turns to the other and says, I wish I knew as little about it as he does.

Self-criticism sessions were held, but these produced more criticism than could usefully be absorbed or accomodated.

Originality is the last refuge of a hero...

In the contemplation of nudes, we congratulate ourselves upon the beauty of which human beings are capable. They reassure us about ourselves, about Being. We are a little lower than the angels, true, but notice that we can get along without that suspect radiance, equal parts paint and literature, on which the angels lean so heavily. The human body is, or can be, a sufficiency.

Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.

I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on...

Is the new generation of writers more concerned than their predecessors with politics, economics, and social class? I think that there are lowered expectations, not sthetic expectations for the work, but lowered expectations in terms of life. My generation, perhaps foolishly, expected, even demanded, that life be wonderful and magical and then tried to make it so by writing in a rather complex way. It seems now quite an eccentric demand.

A few years ago, you seemed worried that perhaps a lack of emotion was a weakness in your stories. A constant worry. Im still worried. I tell my students that one of the things readers want, and deserve, is a certain amount of blood on the floor. I dont always produce it. Probably a function of being more interested in other parts of the process.

I say its realism, bearing on mind Harold Rosenbergs wicked remark that realism is one of fifty-seven varieties of decoration. What about the term experimental, which is often applied to your work? Its not quite a hostile remark, but it does contain within it the notion of the failed experiment. Something like Bone Bubbles was, yes, an experiment and although I wouldnt suggest it was wholly successful, I thought it worth publishing. Its something I do along with a number of other things.

Becketts work is an embarrassment to the Void.

In this century theres been much stress placed not upon what we know but on knowing that our methods are themselves questionableour Song of Songs is the Uncertainty Principle.

Theres always the tension between losing an audience and doing the odd things you might want to try. The effort is always to make what you write nourishing or useful to readers. You do cut out some readers by idiosyncrasies of form. I regret this.

Like a lot of painters in this century, you seem to enjoy lifting things out of the world, in this case words or phrases, and then... And then, sung to and Simonized, theyre thrown into the mesh.

I look for a particular kind of sentence, perhaps more often the awkward than the beautiful. A broke-back sentence is interesting. Any sentence that begins with the phrase, It is not clear that... is clearly clumsy but preparing itself for greatness of a kind. A way of backing into a storyof getting past the readers hardwon armor.

It is well to be simple once in a while.

One of the beautiful things about words is that you can put words together which in isolation mean nothing, or mean only what the dictionary says they mean, and you put them together and you get extraordinary effects.

I think that the effort is to reach a realm of meaning that is not quite sayable. You stay away from what can be said and you try to reach what cant quite be said. Yet it is nevertheless meaningful. And there is such a realm and it is very difficult to talk about. Its not quite nonverbal, but that comes fairly close.

I certainly dont write to exclude anyone.