Frederick Barthelme Quotes

“But if someone had slowed him down, just slightly interrupted his course, maybe he could have gotten through that one nightmarish moment; maybe he would never get that close to it again.”

— Frederick Barthelme

“What had been quiet and restful was now silent and empty.”

— Frederick Barthelme

“There is a feeling of disbelief that comes over you, that takes over, and you kind of go through the motions. You do what you're supposed to do, but in fact you're not there at all.”

— Frederick Barthelme

I lay on the bed and shut my eyes, thinking that nobody really likes marriage, that it's a flawed arrangement, that people get enthusiastic and jump in for a hundred reasons and then, after the ceremony, after a few years, the whole deal turns into a concert they wouldn't have dreamed of attending.

— Frederick Barthelme

I remember loving pencils. I was fond of paper. I loved the small of textbooks. I loved the way the light from a desk lamp was bright on a page. I loved the smell of fresh-cut grass. It was a thing everybody loved, but there was no shame in being that much like everybody else, in sharing that.

— Frederick Barthelme

“A computer is a wonderful and friendly machine, because it's always just a little better than you are. You're always a little bit behind, but it stays right there with you anyway. It allows you to make the mistakes, and then to try to find out what the mistakes are, and then to repair the mistakes. It's always your friend. It quits on you, but it doesn't leave the apartment.”

— Frederick Barthelme

“I remember that feeling, that comfort, that sense of everything in its place, the rightness of it all, when the winter is loved and the summer is all the sun there is. When you want that specific moment, that time, that place, that situation, forever. You can't force it or wish it, and praying doesn't help. You wait, you keep going, you hope maybe it will come around again. That flawless equilibrium.”

— Frederick Barthelme

“She said things and I nodded. I didn't pay attention. She didn't pay attention to me. We floated through our days in that way.”

— Frederick Barthelme

Like most marriages, ours eventually wore down all the cartilage. We were a hip needing replacement. Bone on bone, grinding, day in and day out. It worked but it was hard.

— Frederick Barthelme

Meg Pokrass writes like a brain looking for a body. Wonderful, dark, unforgiving.

— Frederick Barthelme

“Glimpses is dead-on about the high and tight nineties even as it reaches out for the sweet hereafter of the sixties. It longs for something better, and finds it, I guess, as much as anything is ever found anymore. It's a mean, sweet, wry, and disturbing book, in equal portions.”

— Frederick Barthelme