John Barth

Others live for the lie of love Echo lives for her lovely lies loves for their livening.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously.

This is an exciting time. A new chapter in our history.

You're certain to get a decision in a trial.

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?

Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The Bible is not man's word about God, but God's word about man.

If you are a novelist of a certain type of temperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too bad a novelist, except he was a Realist.