135 Quotes by Donald Barthelme

The much heaves and palpitates. It is multidirectional and has a mayor.

There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.

Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.

The task is not so much to solve problems as to propose questions.

The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.

Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.

I think writers like old cities and are made very nervous by new cities.