Donald Barthelme citations (67 citations, Page 2)

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Donald Barthelme

“Wasteland! (Mr. Lionel Bart’s Notes in Exegesis of His Latest Musical Project)”, p. 206.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

“Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.”

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Donald Barthelme

“The Bed”.
Flying to America: 45 More Stories (2007)

“The present goal of the individual in group enterprises is to avoid dominance; leadership is felt to be a character disorder.”

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Donald Barthelme

“The Crisis”.
Great Days (1979)

“It is not true that Kafka wanted Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death. Rather it is the case that Kafka was on fire to be published…rushed to the postbox day after day…ate with editors…intrigued for favorable notices…read the Writer’s Digest…consorted with critics…autographed napkins…made himself available to librarians…spoke on the radio…”

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Donald Barthelme

praragraph deleted from “Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel”, in Tracy Daugherty’s Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme (2009), p. 335.

“Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.”

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Donald Barthelme livre Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), p. 117.

“My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.
My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have one. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma momma momma.””

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Donald Barthelme

I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.
“Chablis”, opening
Forty Stories (1987)

“Is it permitted to differ with Kierkegaard?
—Not only permitted but necessary. If you love him.”

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Donald Barthelme

“The Leap”.
Great Days (1979)

“Do they lie? Fervently. Do they steal? Only silver and gold. Do they remember? I am in constant touch. Hardly a day passes. The children. Some can’t spell, still. Took a walk in the light-manufacturing district, where everything’s been converted. Lots of little shops, wine bars. Saw some strange things. Saw a group of square steel plates arranged on a floor. Very interesting. Saw a Man Mountain Dean dressed in heavenly blue. Wild, chewing children. They were small. Petite. Out of scale. They came and went. Doors banging. They were of different sexes but wore similar clothes. Wandered away, then they wandered back. They’re vague, you know, they tell you things in a vague way. Asked me to leave, said they’d had enough. Enough what? I asked. Enough of my lip, they said. Although the truth was that I had visited upon them only the palest of apothegms—the one about the salt losing its savor, the one about the fowls of the air.”

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Donald Barthelme livre Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

“Shouldness is being flouted here,” said Launcelot. “Shouldness is perhaps self-explanatory, but I have never seen it adequately dealt with, either in print or in the lecture hall. When that huntress got me in the bum with an arrow, it was an offense to shouldness. It shouldn’t have gone that way. I told the story to Sir Roger, and now he never tires of telling it, tells it to everyone who comes down the pike. That a knight of the Round Table could be pierced in that way by a female has a significance quite apart from the ludicrous. It’s in the realm of those things which should not happen—a category which holds much philosophical interest, as anyone who has ever looked into anomaletics will recognize. The insult to my dignity was not nearly so grave as the insult to shouldness.”

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Donald Barthelme

Source: The King (1990), p. 106.

“HENRY: Now it is necessary to court her, and win her, and put on this clean dressing gown, and cut my various nails, and drink something that will kill the millions of germs in my mouth, and say something flattering, and be witty and bonny, and hale and kinky, all just to ease this wrinkle in the groin. It seems a high price.”

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Donald Barthelme

“Snow White” [play], p. 309.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

““Try to be a man about whom nothing is known,” our father said, when we were young. Our father said several other interesting things, but we have forgotten what they were. “Keep quiet,” he said. That we remember. He wished more quiet. One tends to want that, in a National Park. Our father was a man about whom nothing was known. Nothing is known about him still. He gave us the recipes. He was not very interesting. A tree is more interesting. A suitcase is more interesting. A canned good is more interesting. When we sing the father hymn, we notice that he was not very interesting. The words of the hymn notice it. It is explictly commented upon, in the text.”

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Donald Barthelme livre Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), pp.18–19.

“There’s a thing the children say.
—What do the children say?
—They say: Will you always love me?
—Always.
—Will you always remember me?
—Always.
—Will you remember me a year from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me two years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me five years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Knock, knock.
—Who’s there?
—You see?”

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Donald Barthelme

“Great Days”, conclusion.
Great Days (1979)

“Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don’t count?”

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Donald Barthelme

“Heliotrope”, p. 106.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

“Snatch them baldheaded, slap their teeth out. Little starved faces four feet from the screen, you’d speak to them in a loud, commanding voice, get not even a twitch. Use of the preemptive splint, not everyone knows about it. The world reminds us of its power, again and again and again. Going along minding your own business, and suddenly an act of God, right there in front of you. Great falls of snow and bursting birds. Getting guilty, letting it all slide. Sown here and there like little…petunias, one planted in Old Lyme, one in Fairbanks, one in Tempe. Alleged that he slept with her while she was asleep, I can see it, under certain circumstances. You may wink, but not at another person. You may wink only at pigeons. You may pound in your tent pegs, pitch your tent, gather wood for the fire, form the hush puppies. They seek to return? Back to the nest? The warm arms? The ineffable smells? Not on your tintype. Well, I think that’s a little harsh. Think that’s a little harsh do you? Yes, harsh. Harsh. Well that’s a sketch, that is, that’s a tin-plated sketch— They write and telephone. Short of cash? Give us a call, all inquiries handled with the utmost confidentiality. They call constantly, they’re calling still, saying williwaw, williwaw”

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Donald Barthelme livre Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

“Being merciless, while not exactly easy, is finally a job like any other. It’s theater. It’s got nothing to do with my private life. Still, sometimes when I used to yell at my kids, I wondered if I was maybe…putting a little too much into it. They’re grown now, so the question is moot. They seem OK. Roderick is at Harvard and Betsy is married and has a couple of kids of her own.”

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Donald Barthelme

“Ming”, p. 94.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

“William I’m sorry I let my brother hoist you up the mast in that crappy jury-rigged bosun’s chair while everybody laughed! William I’m sorry I could build better fires than you could! I’m sorry my stack of Christmas cards was always bigger than yours! … William I’m sorry I invented bop jogging which you couldn’t do! I’m sorry I loved Antigua! I’m sorry my mind wandered when you talked about the army! I’m sorry I was superior in argument! I’m sorry you slit open my bicycle tires looking for incriminating letters that you didn’t find! You’ll never find them! … William! I’m sorry I looked at Sam but he was so handsome, so handsome, who could not! I’m sorry I slept with Sam! I’m sorry about the library books! I’m sorry about Pete! I’m sorry I never played the guitar you gave me! I’m sorry I married you and I’ll never so it again!”

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Donald Barthelme

“The Apology”.
Great Days (1979)

“No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.”

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Donald Barthelme livre Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), p. 45.

“The Continental Congress resolved that your famous plainneff and modefty would be ill ferved were it known that a houfe for your horfe was paid for from the public purfe.”

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Donald Barthelme

“An Hesitation on the Bank of the Delaware”, p. 80.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

“I smell fennel,” Launcelot said. “That reminds me, I should tell you I have discovered a specific for maims. You take salt, good-quality river mud, and bee urine, and slather it on the maim and hold it there for two days. Works like a charm. Gathering the bee urine is a bit of a bore.”

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Donald Barthelme

Source: The King (1990), p. 94.

“MAGGIE: Did you have a good time?
HILDA: The affair ran the usual course. Fever, boredom, trapped.
MAGGIE: Hot, rinse, spin dry.”

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Donald Barthelme

“The Conservatory” [play], p. 292.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

“I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on…”

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Donald Barthelme

“Basil From Her Garden”.
Flying to America: 45 More Stories (2007)

“ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD.”

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Donald Barthelme livre Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), p. 178.

““How does one conquer fear, Don B.?”
“One takes a frog and sews it to one’s shoe,” he said.
“The left or the right?”
Don B. gave me a pitying look.
“Well, you’d look mighty funny going down the street with only one frog sewed to your shoes, wouldn’t you?" he said. “One frog on each shoe.””

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Donald Barthelme

“The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge”, pp. 7–8.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)