Julian Barnes Quotes

Quotes about:

• I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not,except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it,and how this affects our dealings with others.Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it;some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.

  Julian Barnes

  Sibling, Believe, Helping Others

  49 Copy quote

• Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

  Julian Barnes

  Life, Book, Thinking

  Flaubert's Parrot ch. 13 (1984)

  33 Copy quote

• Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

  Julian Barnes

  Simple, Purpose, Clarity

  Julian Barnes (1985). “Flaubert's parrot”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, May, Greater

  Julian Barnes (2013). “Levels of Life”, p.67, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.

  Julian Barnes

  Selfish, Stupid, Three

  Julian Barnes (2010). “Flaubert's Parrot”, p.104, Random House

  9 Copy quote

• In life, every ending is just the start of another story.

  Julian Barnes

  Stories

  Julian Barnes (2000). “Love, etc”, Jonathan Cape

  7 Copy quote

• When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.

  Julian Barnes

  Country, Pain, Book

  "Julian Barnes: my life as a bibliophile". www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2012.

  22 Copy quote

• 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

  Grief, Mean, Alive

  Julian Barnes (2013). “Levels of Life”, p.102, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may crash and burn, or burn and crash. But sometimes, something new is made, and then the world is changed. Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves. Together, they see further, and they see more clearly.

  Julian Barnes

  Uplifting, Self, Two

  "Review Essay on Levels of Life” by Julian Barnes" by Robert D. Stolorow, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 21, 2014.

  11 Copy quote

• (on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Sunshine, Tunnels

  Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

  Julian Barnes

  Country, Patriotism, Great Patriotic

  25 Copy quote

• Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.

  Julian Barnes

  Attitude, Character, Tragedy

  17 Copy quote

• I don't believe in God, but I miss him.

  Julian Barnes

  Believe, Missing, Believe In God

  Julian Barnes, Vanessa Guignery, Ryan Roberts (2009). “Conversations with Julian Barnes”, p.116, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

• When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Great Book, Plunge

  "Julian Barnes: my life as a bibliophile". www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2012.

  15 Copy quote

• Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that - if it is not moral in its effect - then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure.

  Julian Barnes

  Love Is, Thinking, May

  11 Copy quote

• It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

  Julian Barnes

  Past, Differences, Age

  6 Copy quote

• Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven't. Later still - at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky) - it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven't. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross.

  Julian Barnes

  Sex, Grief, Hands

  Julian Barnes (2013). “Levels of Life”, p.68, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Reality, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Loss, Thinking, Long

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.105, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.

  Julian Barnes

  Memories, Lying, Imagination

  Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.

  Julian Barnes

  Photography, Love Is, Magic

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Grief, Stories

  12 Copy quote

• The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

  Julian Barnes

  Understanding, Study, Academic

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.82, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.

  Julian Barnes

  Safe, Way, Mature

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.93, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.

  Julian Barnes

  Eye, People, Age

  Julian Barnes (1986). “Staring at the sun”, Jonathan Cape

  9 Copy quote

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