All John Barth Quotes
- Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Everyone
- Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts… Angel
- If you are a novelist of a certain type of termperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too… Bad
- Self knowledge is always bad news. Always Bad
- You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics… All
- Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way? Along
- One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in… Bird
- The story of your life is not your life; it's your story. Inspirational
- Choosing is existence. To the extent that you don't choose, you don't exist, Choose
- The Bible is not man's word about God, but God's word about man. Bible
- More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations. Battle
- You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ...… Bearings
- The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world. Change
- The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated… Age
- It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art. Art
- Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion. Fly
- It is often pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we may admire him. Admire
- 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 lay… Deed
- The horror of our history has purged me of opinions. History
- Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people. Assigned
- To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of… Alive
- The transaction will enable us to become a single source of integrated products and services that building owners want in order to optimize comfort and… Building
- Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back. Cart
- In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity. Appeal
- Nobody knew how to be what they were right. Funny