The first obligation of the writer is to be interesting. To be interesting; not to change the world. John Barth More Quotes by John Barth More Quotes From John Barth Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes. John Barth loathing self-loathing self The story of your life is not your life; it's your story. John Barth life-is stories Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people. John Barth values valuable people In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity. John Barth skills doe art Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. John Barth hero stories sports I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated. John Barth talent simple complicated 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. John Barth betrayal writing men 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. John Barth sleep philosophy art Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene. John Barth generations scene artist Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state. John Barth states kind writing Self knowledge is always bad news. John Barth self-knowledge news self 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 in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' - by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love. John Barth reading love mean Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn. John Barth tuition life A curious thing about written literature: It is about four thousand years old, but we have no way of knowing whether four thousand years constitutes senility or the maiden blush of youth. John Barth knowing writing years Finally you begin to make your mistakes on the highest level-let's say the upper slopes of slippery Parnassus-and it's at that point you need coaching. John Barth coaching mistake needs My dear fellow,' Burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves! John Barth men past thinking Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back. John Barth monsoons ships sometimes More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations. John Barth political secret history 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. John Barth chapters knowing ends It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art. John Barth easier technique art
