John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barthis an American writer, best known for his postmodernist and metafictional fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 May 1930
CountryUnited States of America
betrayal writing men
To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever feel a man, alive and kicking.
order want energy
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 energy efficiency
ships sometimes skipper
Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.
life tuition
Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.
knowing ends chapters
I don't see how anybody starts a novel without knowing how it's going to end. I usually make detailed outlines: how many chapters it will be and so forth.
self loathing self-loathing
Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.
history knaves events
History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant
way difficulty loses
Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way?
art philosophy sleep
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 and a few other things. The history of everything.
world crafts want
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 a novelist except he was a Realist.
angel heart men
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 now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?
sweet self play
I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.
simple talent complicated
I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.
loyalty men allegiance
All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.