135 Quotes by Donald Barthelme

- Love, which is a kind of permission to come closer than ordinary norms of good behavior might usually sanction.- Back rubs.- Which enables us to see each other without clothes on, for example, in lust and shame.- Examining perfections, imperfections.- Which allows us to say wounding things to each other which would not be kosher under the ordinary rules of civilized discourse.

The trouble with capturing one is that that original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon.

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.

-It is true that I am part of the laughing-aristocrat structure, Charles said. I don't mean I am one of them. I mean I am their creature. They hold me in thrall.Laughing aristocrats who invented the cost-plus contract . . .Laughing aristocrats who invented the real estate broker . . .Laughing aristocrats who invented Formica . . .Laughing aristocrats wiping their surfaces clean with a damp cloth . . .Charles poured himself another brilliant green Heineken.-To the struggle!

The snow is coming," she said. "Soon it will be snow time. Together then as in other snow times. Drinking busthead 'round the fire. Truth is a locked room that we knock the lock off from time to time, and then board up again. Tomorrow you will hurt me, and I will inform you that you have done so, and so on and so on. To hell with it. Come, viridian friend, come and sup with me.

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.

... 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")

the thing about books is, there are quite a number you don't have to read.

mead for my men!