Letters Quotes

“[T]he world is richer in associations than meanings . . . and it is the part of wisdom to distinguish between the two.”
― John Barth, Letters

“Drolls & dreamers that we are, we fancy that we can undo what we fancy we have done.”
― John Barth, Letters

“That life sometimes imitates art is a mere Oscar Wilde-ish curiosity; that it should set about to do so in such unseemly haste that between notes and novel (not to mention between the drafted and the printed page) what had been fiction becomes idle fact, invention history--disconcerting! Especially to a fictionist who, like yours truly, had long since turned his professional back on literary realism in favour of the fabulous irreal, and only in this latest enterprise had projected, not without misgiving, a detente with the realistic tradition. It is as if Reality, a mistress too long ignored, must now settle scores with her errant lover.”
― John Barth, Letters