Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail. — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress. — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art. — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
“art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality” — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. They've… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature, (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love...And you can never touch a girl in the… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“INTERVIEWER Why don’t you write tragedy? BARTHELME I’m fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It’s a… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“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… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“Of course we had hoped that he would take up his sword as part of the President's war on poetry. The time is ripe… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“Mother, have you noticed that this society we’re in tends to be a little…repressive?” “What does that mean, Eugenie? What does that mean, that… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.” — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“They were heading I judged for the Sixth Precinct. Had I had the black hat with me, and sufficient men and horses and lariats… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality” — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
“the hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements… — Donald Barthelme Copy Share
