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I don't think it's a good idea, as a rule, for artists to explain their art, even if they can. Jorge Luis Borges puts it arrogantly: God shouldn't stoop to theology. A modern painter put it more politely and poetically: Birds have no need of ornithology.

— John Barth The Friday Book (1984)

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More quotes by John Barth

'Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion.

The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

When a place is central to a good writer's imagination, it is because that place has become a metaphor for larger concerns.

introductory note (1984)

Is a man a salvage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile manners? Or is salvagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

I have remarked elsewhere that I regard the Almighty as not a bad novelist, except that He is a realist.

The Friday Book (1984)

We tell stories and listen to them because we live stories and live in them.

The Friday Book (1984)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Barth (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.