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.
More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations. - John Barth
More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.
- John Barth
Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. - John Barth
Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people. - John Barth
Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.
Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn. - John Barth
Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.
Self knowledge is always bad news. - John Barth
Self knowledge is always bad news.
The story of your life is not your life; it's your story. - John Barth
The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.
The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world. - John Barth
The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world.
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity. - John Barth
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.
Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene. - John Barth
Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.
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