"We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages." -Donald Barthelme
"I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise," Barthelme wrote in the short story "Jaws," from his collection Forty Stories. "I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew." An author of postmodern fiction, Barthelme is mostly remembered for his short stories, though he did write four novels, including 1967's Snow White, a retelling of the classic fairy tale (the above quote is from the play based on this book).
