Julian Barnes Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Julian Barnes on Wise Famous Quotes.
Religion decays, the icon remains; a narrative is forgotten, yet its representation still magnetizes.
In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
You only followed where you were going if you wanted to get back to where you had started from, and she knew that was impossible.
What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
At best you have one of those debilitating conditions which come in many forms, and which some people decline to admit actually exist.
As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.
Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
Life was the cat that dragged the parrot downstairs by its tail; his head banged against every step.
Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?
I am a worm in comparison with His Excellency. I am a worm.' 'Yes, that's just it, you are a worm indeed.
Insofar as I liked doing things by myself, it was partly for the pleasure of telling her about them afterwards.
...and who's to say what would have been for the best? You only found out afterwards, when it was too late.
Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.
I suppose the truth is that, yes, I'm not odd enough not to have done the things I've ended up doing with my life.
You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.
If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.
I don't ever want to get old. Spare me that. Have you the power? No, even you don't have the power, alas.
This [...] isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you witnessed.
All true definitions of art are circular, and all untrue definitions of art ascribe to it a specific function. A
Poets don't run out of material the way novelists do because they don't depend on material in the same way.
Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary
In truth, he was just another man, behaving as men did in books, and she was just another woman for believing otherwise.
He had entered some state of grace - but one that did not exclude. He made you feel you were his co-thinker, even if you said nothing.
An element of propaganda, of sales and marketing, always intervened between the inner and the outer person.
But you find yourself repeating, "They grow up so quickly, don't they?" when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.
If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that.
To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.
Poetry's packaged as a late-night slot, a quote minority taste unquote, like water-skiing or goat-fucking or something.
Throw off your grief,' doubters imply, 'and we can all go back to pretending death doesn't exist, or at least is comfortably far away.
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
She knew me better than anyone else in the world. And still wanted to have lunch with me. And let me go on and on about myself.
And since the griefstruck rarely know what they need or want, only what they don't, offence-giving and offence-taking are common.
Medicine then must have been such an exciting, desperate, violent business; nowadays it is all pills and bureaucracy.
Why does anything left-wing have to be trendy before it's read, and by the time it's trendy it's already a force for conservatism?