Quotes from Donald Barthelme

Our becoming is done.

Be like Sindbad. Venture forth! Embosom the waves, let your shoes be sucked from your feet and your very trousers enticed by the frothing deep. The ambiguous sea awaits, I told them, marry it! There's nothing out there, they said. Wrong, I said, absolutely wrong. There are waltzes, sword canes, and sea wrack dazzling to the eyes.

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

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.

The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon.

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

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.

On the other hand I myself have impulses toward violence uneasily concealed. Especially when I look out of the window at the men and women, walking along in the course of a day because I spend so much time, as we all do, looking out of windows to determine what is out there, and what should be done about it.

All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities, the note concludes. This is surely true. Yet the vivacity with which he embraces ruin is unexampled, in my experience.

Do you feel that the creation of new modes of hysteria is a viable undertaking for the artist of today? Yes ( ) No ( )

It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men.

Queremos que el Padre Muerto esté muerto. Nos sentamos con los ojos llenos de lágrimas y deseamos que el Padre Muerto esté muerto… y entretanto hacemos cosas asombrosas con las manos.

Words have halos, patinas, overhangs, echoes.

Truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.

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.

My criticism was that you never understood the larger picture, said the Dead Father. Young men never understand the larger picture. -I don't suggest I understand it now. I do understand the frame. The limits. -Of course the frame is easier to understand. -Older people tend to overlook the frame, even when they are looking right at it, said Thomas. They don't like to think about it.

You are asking me to give up my sword? -I am. -Then I shall be swordless. Think what that means.

He is, professionally, an arbiter of comedy. "A sort of drama critic?" "More what you would term an umpire. The members of the audience are given a set of rules and the rules constitute the comedy.

A week later she is still with me. She is departing by degrees. If I tore her hair out, no one but me would love her. But she don't want me to tear her hair out. I wear different shirts for her: red, orange, silver. We hold hand through the night.

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.

I have to admit we are locked in the most exquisite mysterious muck. This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.

The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not.

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.

he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.