Julian Barnes Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Julian Barnes.
Famous Quotes By Julian Barnes
We listen to what people say, we read what they write - that's our evidence, that's our corroboration. But if the face contradicts the speaker's words, we interrogate the face. A shifty look in the eye, a rising blush, the uncontrollable twitch of a face muscle - and then we
know. We recognise the hypocrisy or the false claim, and the truth stands evident before us. — Julian Barnes
History is a raw onion sandwich, it just repeats, it burps. We've seen it again and again this year. Same old story, Same old oscillation between tyranny and rebellion, war and peace, prosperity and impoverishment — Julian Barnes
I think a great book - leaving aside other qualities such as narrative power, characterization, style, and so on - is a book that describes the world in a way that has not been done before; and that is recognized by those who read it as telling new truths - about society or the way in which emotional lives are led, or both - such truths having not been previously available, certainly not from official records or government documents, or from journalism or television. — Julian Barnes
There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this there is great unrest. — Julian Barnes
When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell. — Julian Barnes
If you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention. — Julian Barnes
Next to not living with those one loves, the worst torture is living with those one doesn't love. — Julian Barnes
And in these times, people were always in danger of becoming less than fully themselves. If you terrorised them enough, they became something else, something diminished and reduced: mere techniques for survival. And so, it was not just an anxiety, but often a brute fear that he experienced: the fear that love's last days had come. — Julian Barnes
Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure. — Julian Barnes
Memory is identity ... You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death. — Julian Barnes
You like this stuff?' she asked neutrally. 'Good to dance to,' I replied, a little defensively. 'Do you dance to it? Here? In your room? By yourself?' 'No, not really.' Though of course I did. — Julian Barnes
Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all. — Julian Barnes
Gradually, he didn't doubt, the world would calm down into a gigantic welfare state devoted to sporting, cultural and sexual exchange, with the accepted international currency being items of hifi equipment. — Julian Barnes
You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people. — Julian Barnes
Major General Anders later reflected: I think it was the Earthrise that really kind of got everybody in the solar plexus ... We were looking back at our planet, the place where we evolved. Our Earth was quite colorful, pretty and delicate compared to the very rough, rugged, beat-up, even boring lunar surface. I think it struck everybody that here we'd come 240,000 miles to see the Moon and it was the Earth that was really worth looking at. — Julian Barnes
Love might or might not promote kindness, gratify vanity, and clear the skin, but it did not lead to happiness; there was always an inequality of feeling or intention present. such was love's nature. of course, it 'worked' in the sense that it caused life's profoundest emotions, made him fresh as a spring's linden-blossom and broke him like a traitor on the wheel. — Julian Barnes
Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve? — Julian Barnes
What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible. — Julian Barnes
I'd ban coincidences, if I were a dictator of fiction. Well, perhaps not entirely. Coincidences would be permitted in the picaresque; that's where they belong. Go on, take them: let — Julian Barnes
But ignoring the bad things makes you end up believing that bad things never happen. You are always surprised by them. It surprises you that guns kill, that money corrupts, that snow falls in winter. — Julian Barnes
The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down? — Julian Barnes
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. — Julian Barnes
The rainbow in place of the unicorn? Why didn't God just restore the unicorn? We animals would have been happier with that, instead of a big hint in the sky about God's magnanimity every time it stopped raining. — Julian Barnes
What becomes of a chain of argument when the links are made of different metals, each with a separate frangibility? — Julian Barnes
But he was a connoisseur of the if-only, and so they did travel. They travelled in the past-conditional. — Julian Barnes
Integrity is like virginity: once lost, never recoverable — Julian Barnes
You can put it another way, of course; you always can. — Julian Barnes
You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible, whereas the heart, the human heart, I'm afraid, looks a fucking mess. — Julian Barnes
Had she told him that she loved him? Yes, of course, many times; but it was his imagination - the prompter's voice at his ear - which had added the words "for ever." He hadn't asked what she meant when she told him she loved him. What lover ever does? Those plush and gilded words rarely seem to need annotation at the time. — Julian Barnes
Sexual orthodoxy and the exercise of power. If a President can't keep his pants on, does he lose the right to rule us? If a public servant cheats on his wife does this make him more likely to cheat on the electorate? For myself, I'd rather be ruled by an adulterer, by some sexual rogue, than by a prim celibate or zipped-up spouse. As criminals tend to specialize in certain crimes, so corrupt politicians normally specialize in their corruption: the sexual blackguards stick to fucking, the bribe-takers to graft. In which case it would make more sense to elect proven adulterers instead of discouraging them from public life. I — Julian Barnes
All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things. — Julian Barnes
When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. — Julian Barnes
I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have the right ideas, partly because I think that short stories are more difficult. I think learning to write short stories also made me attracted toward a paring down of the novel form. — Julian Barnes
Nobody stops to think about the world anymore. We live in a world where they make
children pay to see the fish eat. Nowadays even fish are exploited, she thought. Exploited, and then poisoned. The ocean out there is filling up with poison. The fish will die too — Julian Barnes
Such was humanity's self-love, Nadar concluded, that most were inevitably disappointed when they finally saw a true image of themselves. — Julian Barnes
He died a modern death, in hospital, ... after medical science had prolonged his life to a point where the terms on which it was being offered were unimpressive. — Julian Barnes
Isn't there something between stagnation and heading somewhere?" "Like?" "Like having a nice time. Enjoy the day and all that? — Julian Barnes
Tragedies in hindsight look like farces. — Julian Barnes
You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed ... — Julian Barnes
The more you learn, the less you fear. — Julian Barnes
Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be. — Julian Barnes
And I thought of a cresting wave of water, lit by a moon, rushing past and vanishing upstream, pursued by a band of yelping students whose torchbeams criss-crossed in the dark. There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest. — Julian Barnes
I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation ... the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. [p. 68] — Julian Barnes
How easy it was to be a Communist when you weren't living under Communism! — Julian Barnes
What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness? — Julian Barnes
Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough? — Julian Barnes
And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly. — Julian Barnes
Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death. — Julian Barnes
Every day is Sunday" - that wouldn't make a bad epitaph, would it? — Julian Barnes
But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book. — Julian Barnes
I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation. — Julian Barnes
Aeronautics did not lead to democracy, unless budget airlines count. — Julian Barnes
Every relationship contains within it the ghosts, or the shadows, of all the other relationships it isn't. All the abandoned alternatives, the forgotten choices, the lives you could have led but didn't and haven't. — Julian Barnes
Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience. — Julian Barnes
Sometimes you find the panel, but it doesn't open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you've looked. That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to know everything and those who don't. This search is a sign of love I maintain. — Julian Barnes
Taxi-drivers in Frankfurt are said to dislike the annual Book Fair because literary folk, instead of being shuttled to prostitutes like respectable members of other convening professions, prefer to stay in their hotels and fuck one another — Julian Barnes
The heap of dirty dishes was normal for Arthur, who had applied for a reduction in his water rate on the grounds that he washed up only every fortnight, and then used the leftover liquid for watering his roses. — Julian Barnes
I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty. Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler. — Julian Barnes
At best you have one of those debilitating conditions which come in many forms, and which some people decline to admit actually exist. — Julian Barnes
There is a grotesquerie to grief as well. You lose the sense of your existence being rational, or justifiable. You feel absurd. — Julian Barnes
How attracted to one another we had been; how light she felt on my lap; how exciting it always was; how, even though we weren't having "full sex," all the elements of it--the lust, the tenderness, the candour, the trust--were there anyway. And how part of me hadn't minded not "going the whole way"...This acceptance of less than others had was also due to fear, of course: fear of pregnancy, fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, fear of an overwhelming closeness I couldn't handle. — Julian Barnes
No sooner do we come into this world, than bits of us start to fall off. — Julian Barnes
Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery. — Julian Barnes
History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated. — Julian Barnes
[Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together. — Julian Barnes
Books are not life, however much we may wish they were — Julian Barnes
The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern ... American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity. — Julian Barnes
For Montaigne, the death of youth, which so often takes place unnoticed is the harder death; what we habitually refer to as 'death' is no more than the death of old age ... The leap from the attenuated survival of senescence into nonexistence is much easier than the sly transition from heedless youth crabbed and regretful age. — Julian Barnes
History is not just the lies of the victors; it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. — Julian Barnes
Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary — Julian Barnes
One of the things he had learned in life, and which he hoped he could rely on, was that a greater pain drives out a lesser one. A strained muscle disappears before toothache, toothache disappears before a crushed finger. He hoped - it was his only hope now - that the pain of cancer, the pain of dying , would drive out the pains of love. It did not seem likely. — Julian Barnes
History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us. — Julian Barnes
An element of propaganda, of sales and marketing, always intervened between the inner and the outer person. — Julian Barnes
None of this, of course, was ever stated: the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always remained implicit. — Julian Barnes
There's always talk. It's the same price as rain. — Julian Barnes
In an ideal world, a young man should not be an ironical person. At that age, irony prevents growth, stunts the imagination. It is best to start life in a cheerful and open state of mind, believing in others, being optimistic, being frank with everyone about everything. And then, as one comes to understand things and people better, to develop a sense of irony. The natural progression of human life is from optimism to pessimism; and a sense of irony helps temper pessimism, helps produce balance, harmony. But — Julian Barnes
One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped. — Julian Barnes
Her ambitions were no longer specifically for happiness or financial security or freedom from disease (thought they included all three), but for something more general: the continuing certainty of things. She needed to know that she would carry on being herself. — Julian Barnes
That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us. — Julian Barnes
What did I care about saving the world if the world couldn't, wouldn't, save her? — Julian Barnes
Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults. — Julian Barnes
If novelists truly wanted to simulate the delta of lfe's possibilities, this is what they'd do. At the back of the book would be a set of sealed envelopes in various colours. Each would be clearly marked on the outside: Traditional Happy Ending; Traditional Unhappy Ending; Traditional Half-and-Half Ending; Deus ex Machina; Modernist Arbitrary Ending; End of the World Ending; Cliffhanger Ending; Dream Ending; Opaque Ending; Surrealist Ending; and so on. You would be allowed only one, and would have to destroy the envelopes you didn't select. — Julian Barnes
Life ... is a bit like reading. ... If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is there to your reading? Only that it's yours. Similarly, why live your life? Because it's yours. But what if such an answer becomes less and less convincing? — Julian Barnes
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. — Julian Barnes
The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully. — Julian Barnes
Of course, there were other sorts of literature
theoretical, self-referencial, lachrymosely autobiographical
but they were just dry wanks. — Julian Barnes
We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracting force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both. — Julian Barnes
The engineers of human souls'. There were two main problems. The first was that many people did not want their souls to be egineered, thank you very much. They were content with their souls being left as they were when they had come into this world; and when you tried to lead them, they resisted. Come to this free open-air concert, comrade. Oh, we really think you should attend. Yes, of course, it is voluntary, but it might be a mistake if you didn't show your face...
And the second problem with engineering human souls was more basic. It was this: who engineers the engineers? — Julian Barnes
This is what those who haven't crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean that they do not exist. — Julian Barnes
In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives
and time itself
would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernible. — Julian Barnes
But then, no one told the whole truth about sex. And in that respect, nothing has changed. — Julian Barnes
I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for - and whose noble gesture re-emphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life. — Julian Barnes