What I’ve learned is that the muses’ decision to sing or…

Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and o'erlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and…

— John Barth

“So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it…

— John Barth

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

— John Barth

“That clever folk care less for what ye think than why ye think it.”

— John Barth

Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the…

— John Barth

“There's a great difficulty in making choices if you have any imagination at all. Faced with such a multitude of desireable choices, no one…

— John Barth

Self knowledge is always bad news.

— John Barth

The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world.

— John Barth

Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way?

— John Barth

A curious thing about written literature: It is about four thousand years old, but we have no way of knowing whether four thousand years…

— John Barth

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

— John Barth

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct…

— John Barth

“Am I boring you? I don't really care, I suppose, but I'll be more comfortable if I knew all this interested you. No doubt…

— John Barth

Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.

— John Barth

“The difference here 'twixt simple and witty folk, if the truth be known, is that your plain man cares much for what stand ye…

— John Barth