Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are. — 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 you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.” — Donald Barthelme Copy Share Image
“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 Image
