Elusive Quote by Donald Barthelme

“Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.”

Donald Barthelme

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More by Donald Barthelme

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…

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“The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human…

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“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…

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“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…

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“Our becoming is done.”

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“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 for that. The root causes of poetry have been studied and studied. And now that we know that pockets of poetry still exist in our great country, especially in the large urban centers, we ought to…

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Capitalism places every man in competition with his fellows for a share of the available wealth. A few people accumulate big piles, but most…

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“You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were…

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“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…

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I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets…

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“This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.”

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“They were heading I judged for the Sixth Precinct. Had I had the black hat with me, and sufficient men and horses and lariats…

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Explore all 142 Donald Barthelme quotes

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I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration…

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Humility is an elusive virtue. The more we pursue it - and the more we seem to acquire it - the more we take…

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We are all pilgrims on an elusive and endless road... Despite our attempts to build lives on stone foundations, our spirits continuously flow. Endless…

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I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by…

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One of the capabilities, which seems to be the most difficult for aspiring leaders to maste is realistic optimism. It requires one to recognize that our experience of life is largely up to us, that our situations, good or bad, are largely due to our ability on a moment-to-moment basis to capitalize on opportunity. Those that approach life as if…

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For at the heart of the uniform, reasoning is shaky and elusive: a mind in search of ideas should first stock up on appearances.

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Insofar as one can talk of a Vionnet school, it comes mostly from my having been an enemy of fashion. There is something superficial…

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The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If…

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I think love is one of the most elusive things in the world. I don't know that there's a perfect formula for it and…

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Personal happiness seems mysteriously and frustratingly elusive. Even when people achieve it, they can't hold onto it. That is the greatest clue, the biggest…

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This too is a jihad. Yet we Americans find ourselves in the dangerous position of going to war not against a state but against a phantom. The jihad we have embarked upon is targeting an elusive and protean enemy. The battle we have begun is never-ending. But it may be too late to wind back the heady rhetoric. We have…

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