135 Quotes by Donald Barthelme

--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.

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.

Of course we did everything right, insofar as we were able to imagine what "right" was.

It's only when you stop to think about it. I don't stop. - From "Morning

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.

-You are killing me."" -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes.

There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena.

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you.