Choosing is existence. To the extent that you don't choose, you don't exist, — John Barth Copy Share Image
“Let your repentance salt my shoe leather," I said presently, "and then, as I lately sheathed my blade of anger, so sheath… — John Barth Copy Share Image
“Love it is that drives and sustains us!' I translate: we don't know what drives and sustains us, only that we are… — John Barth Copy Share Image
“people still fall in love, and out, yes, in and out, and out and in, and they please each other, and hurt… — John Barth Copy Share Image
“Others live for the lie of love; Echo lives for her lovely lies, loves for their livening.” — John Barth Copy Share Image
“…beg Love’s pardon for your want of faith. Helen chose you without reason because she loves you without cause; embrace her without… — John Barth Copy Share Image
The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the… — John Barth Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated. — John Barth Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world. — John Barth Copy Share Image
Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way? — John Barth Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
