T W Barnes Quotes & Sayings

I guess when life hands you lemons, chop 'em up and get lemonade; when life hands you cats, chop 'em up and get pussy. — John Barnes

I left my Phillie at home, Do you have another? I wanna get blunted, my brother. — Daryl Barnes

I had my knife in hand before I realized I'd reached for it and had kicked open the ... front door before it ever occurred to me that it might have already been unlocked. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it — Simon Barnes

Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance. — Julian Barnes

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. — Julian Barnes

Studies of cancer patients show that attitudes of mind have very little effect on clinical outcome. We may say we are fighting cancer, but cancer is merely fighting us; we may think we have beaten it, when it has only gone away to regroup. It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to. And so, perhaps, with grief. We imagine we have battled against it, been purposeful, overcome sorrow, scrubbed the rust from our soul, when all that has happened is that grief has moved elsewhere, shifted its interest. — Julian Barnes

Posterity will jump to conclusions: that is its nature. — Julian Barnes

Casey doesn't trust him."
"Casey doesn't trust anyone," I replied. "He's paranoid like that. I mean, come on, he's a werewolf who installed a nanny cam in his kids' room." I pointed my spoon at Ali for emphasis. "A nanny cam. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you what you're going to do. There's a difference. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur - would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev? I wondered if I would be velvet black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy, spotty fifteen-year-old. And because it's rarer, it sends the blusher tumbling back to that time when life felt like nothing more than one long sequence of embarrassments. — Julian Barnes

An element of propaganda, of sales and marketing, always intervened between the inner and the outer person. — Julian Barnes

And b-t-w, if anyone asks you what's in the box, I'd say 'feminine supplies.'"
The box was large and heavy, and there was a distinct clanging sound as I carried it. "As in tampons?"
"Keely's not going to ask questions. Ali's busy with the twins, and everyone else around here is male. Tampons scare the bejeezus out of them, my dad included, but if the person who asks is a Were, they'd smell a lie. Hence, feminine supplies."
"Because we're females, and they're our supplies?" I guessed.
"No. Because weapons are feminine." Lake gave me an insulted look. "Why do you think I named my gun Matilda? — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Frequently I will end a service of worship in our congregation by saying something like, "Every day this week you have to decide if you want to achieve your life or receive it. If you make achieving your goal, your constant companion will be complaint, because you will never achieve enough. If you make receiving the goal, your constant companion will be gratitude for all that God is achieving in your life." I'm not certain that there are such things as measures of our spirituality, but if there are, then gratitude is probably the best one. It indicates that we are paying attention. — M. Craig Barnes

Let me share some facts with you about the law in most of our country. California is in many ways a little different from the rest of the world, and California has better gun laws than many states, although California's need to be improved. — Michael D. Barnes

History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us. — Julian Barnes

The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it? — Julian Barnes

If I had a nickel for every time I almost died, I would have been driving to school in a Ferrari and flying off to Bora-Bora on the weekends. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I don't need your permission to search your locker. The headmaster's tone drew my attention back in his direction. This, I inferred from the rise in volume, was supposed to be the voice of authority. If you didn't need my permission, I thought, then why did you ask for it? — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

...is not your hero. He's your god. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world — Simon 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

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense. — Julian Barnes

All banks should be under government control. Deposits guaranteed, dividends reduced, officials turned into state servants taking their orders from Washington ... — Margaret Ayer Barnes

The simple truth - every day is precious. When it's gone, it never comes back to you. — Emilie Barnes

My brother distrusts the essential truth of memories; I distrust the way we colour them in. We each have our own cheap-mail-order paintbox, and our favourite hues. Thus, I remembered Grandma a few pages ago as "petite and unopinionated". My brother, when consulted, takes out his paintbrush and counterproposes "short and bossy. — Julian Barnes

When I felt myself escaping from the earth," he commented, "my reaction was not pleasure but happiness." It was "a moral feeling," he added. "I could hear myself living, so to speak. — Julian Barnes

I couldn't ever boil potatoes over the heat of your affection. Your love would never bridge a gap; it wouldn't even fill up the hole that the mice came through ... — Djuna Barnes

For all you know, this moment, this second, or the next, or the next, could be your destiny. It's not about having plans. It's about having purpose and being who, not what you want to be. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I think escapism is very important, certainly in my life. I love nothing more than escaping into the world of a film or a novel. To be involved in creating that for other people is a privilege. — Ben Barnes

Anyway ... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me, so I decide to settle myself against the soft zigzag of her body. As I move and start to nestle my shin against a calf whose muscles are loosened by sleep, she sense what I'm doing, and without waking reaches up with her left hand and pulls the hair off her shoulders on the top of her head, leaving me her bare nape to nestle in. Each time she does this I feel a shudder of love at the exactness of this sleeping courtesy. My eyes prickle with tears, and I have to stop myself from waking her up to remind her of my love. At that moment, unconsciously, she's touched some secret fulcrum of my feelings for her. — Julian Barnes