Sixty Stories Quotes

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

“How can you be alienated without first having been connected?”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“Fragments are the only forms I trust.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“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

“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

“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. To describe it takes many hundreds of thousands of words. Our muck is only a part of a much greater muck -- the nation-state -- which is itself the creation of that muck of mucks, human consciousness. Of course all these things also have a touch of sublimity -- as when Moonbelly sings, for example, or all the lights go out. What a happy time that was, when all the electricity went away! If only we could re-create that paradise! By, for instance, all forgetting to pay our electric bills at the same time. All nine million of us. Then we'd all get those little notices that say unless we remit within five days the lights will go out. We all stand up from our chairs with the notice in ours hands. The same thought drifts across the furrowed surface of nine million minds. We wink at each other, through the walls.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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

“The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human love, which remains as grisly and golden as ever, no matter what is tattooed upon the warm tympanic page.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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 and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every belief and ignorance rational living private client bad bosom uncertain workmen mutton-tugger obedience to the rules of the logical system Lord Muck hot tears harmonica rascal

that's chaos can you produce chaos? Alice asked certainly I can produce chaos I said I produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos is handsome and attractive she said and more durable than regret I said and more nourishing than regret she said”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“Do I want to be loved in spite of?Do you? Does anyone? But aren't we all to some degree? Aren't there important parts of all of us which must be, so to say, gazed past? I turn a blind eye to that aspect of you and turn a blind eye to that aspect of me.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

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

“I have to admit we are mired in the most exquisite mysterious muck. This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“My mother was a royal virgin," Peterson said, "and my father a shower of gold. My childhood was pastoral and energetic and rich in experiences which developed my character. As a young man I was noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in form express and admirable, and in apprehension..." Peterson went on and on and although he was, in a sense, lying, in a sense he was not.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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

“Dear Francesca, tell me, is this a succesful party, in your view? Is this the best we can do? I know that you have always wanted to meet Kong; now that you have met him and he has said whatever he has said to you (I saw you smiling), can we go home? I mean you to your home, me to my home, all these others to their own homes, cells, cages? I am feeling a little ragged. What made us think that we could escape things like bankruptcy, alcoholism, being dissapointed, having children? Say 'No,' refuse me once and for all, let me try something else. Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what 'right' was. Is it really important to know that this movie is fine, and that one terrible, and to talk intelligently about the difference? Wonderful elegance! No good at all!”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“Truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“I myself," said Gibbon, "am slightly underdone in the personal worthlessness line. It was Papa's fault. He used no irony. The communications mix offered by the parent to the child is as you know twelve percent do this, eighty-two percent don't do that, and six percent huggles and endearments. That is standard. Now, to avoid boring himself or herself to death during this monition the parent enlivens the discourse with wit, usually irony of the cheaper sort. The irony ambigufies the message, but more importantly establishes in the child the sense of personal lack-of-worth. Because the child understands that one who is talked to in this way is not much of a something. Ten years of it goes a long way. Fifteen is better. That is where Pap fell down. He eschewed irony.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“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, Sixty Stories

“— Де ти переважно крадеш свої книжки?

— Переважно в аптеках, — сказав Карл. — У них там гарно, бо вони здебільшого довгі й вузькі, а персонал звик стояти в кінці приміщення, де відпускають ліки, тоді як книжки зазвичай на маленьких обертових полицях біля входу. За нормальних обставин доволі нескладно засунути в кишеню одну-дві, якщо ти в пальто.

— Але ж…

— Так, — сказав Карл. — Я знаю, про що ти думаєш. Якщо я краду книжки, то краду й інше. Але метафізично крадіжка книжок відрізняється від крадіжки грошей.”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories