Donald Barthelme > Quotes

“--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

“Write about what you're afraid of.”
― 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

“The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur
which breaks your heart.”
― Donald Barthelme

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

“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, Snow White

“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

“There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.”
― Donald Barthelme

“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”
― Donald Barthelme, Me and Miss Mandible

“Mother, have you noticed that this society we’re in tends to be a little…repressive?”
“What does that mean, Eugenie? What does that mean, that strange new word, ‘repressive,’ that I have never heard before?”
“It means…it’s like when you decide to do something, and you get up out of your chair to do it, and you take a step, and then become aware of frosty glances being directed at you from every side.”
“Frosty glances?”
“Your desires are stifled.”
“What desires are you talking about?”
“Just desires in general. Any desires. It’s a whole…I guess atmosphere is the…word…a tendency on the part of the society…”
“You’d better sew some more pillow cases, Eugenie.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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

“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, Me and Miss Mandible

“How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?”
― Donald Barthelme, Snow White

“Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.”
― 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

“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, Sixty Stories

“Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.”
― Donald Barthelme

“The horsewife! The very basebone of the American plethora! The horsewife! Without whom the entire structure of civilian life would crumble! Without the horsewife, the whole raison d'être of our existences would be reduced, in a twinkling, to that brute level of brutality for which we so rightly reproach the filthy animals. Were it not for her enormous purchasing power and the heedless gaiety with which it is exercised, we would still be going around dressed in skins probably, with no big ticket items to fill the empty voids, in our homes and in our hearts. The horsewife! Nut and numen of our intersubjectivity. The horsewife! The chiefest ornament on the golden tree of human suffering!”
― Donald Barthelme, Snow White

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

“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, Forty Stories

“And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“The President looked out of his window. He was not very happy. “I worry about Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and their lover, Snow White. I sense that all is not well with them. Now, looking out over this green lawn, and these fine rosebushes, and into the night and the yellow buildings, and the falling Dow Jones Index and the screams of the poor, I am concerned. I have many important things to worry about, but I worry about Bill and the boys too. Because I am the President. Finally. the President of the whole fucking country. And they are Americans, Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and Snow White. They are Americans. My Americans.”
― Donald Barthelme, Snow White

“I spoke to Sylvia. "Do you think this is a good life?”
― Donald Barthelme, Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts

“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, Sixty Stories

“The Dead Father was slaying, in a grove of music and musicians. First he slew a harpist and then a performer upon the serpent and also a banger upon the rattle and also a blower of the Persian trumpet and one upon the Indian trumpet and one upon the Hebrew trumpet and one upon the Roman trumpet and one upon the Chinese trumpet of copper-covered wood. Also a blower upon the marrow trumpet and one upon the slide trumpet and one who wearing upon his head the skin of a cat performed upon the menacing murmurous cornu and three blowers on the hunting horn and several blowers of the conch shell and a player of the double aulos and flautists of all descriptions and a Panpiper and a fagotto player and two virtuosos of the quail whistle and a zampogna player whose fingering of the chanters was sweet to the ear and by-the-bye and during the rest period he slew four buzzers and a shawmist and one blower upon the water jar and a clavicytheriumist who was before he slew her a woman, and a stroker of the theorbo and countless nervous-fingered drummers as well as an archlutist, and then whanging his sword this way and that the Dead Father slew a cittern plucker and five lyresmiters and various mandolinists, and slew too a violist and a player of the kit and a picker of the psaltery and a beater of the dulcimer and a hurdy-gurdier and a player of the spike fiddle and sundry kettledrummers and a triangulist and two-score finger cymbal clinkers and a xylophone artist and two gongers and a player of the small semantron who fell with his iron hammer still in his hand and a trictrac specialist and a marimbist and a maracist and a falcon drummer and a sheng blower and a sansa pusher and a manipulator of the gilded ball.
The Dead Father resting with his two hands on the hilt of his sword, which was planted in the red and steaming earth.
My anger, he said proudly.
Then the Dead Father sheathing his sword pulled from his trousers his ancient prick and pissed upon the dead artists, severally and together, to the best of his ability-four minutes, or one pint.
Impressive, said Julie, had they not been pure cardboard.
My dear, said Thomas, you deal too harshly with him.
I have the greatest possible respect for him and for what he represents, said Julie, let us proceed.”
― Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

“Strings of language extend in every direction to bind the world into a rushing, ribald whole.”
― 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, Sadness

“See the moon? It hates us.”
― Donald Barthelme

“-You are killing me."

" -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes.”
― Donald Barthelme, The Dead Father

“Dan keeps telling Snow White that "Christmas is coming!" How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?”
― Donald Barthelme, Snow White

“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.”
― Donald Barthelme, Snow White

“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, Sixty Stories