Not-Knowing Quotes

“Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.”
― Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of 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, Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme

“art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality”
― Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme

“the writer is [...] the work's way of getting itself written”
― Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme