Julian Barnes Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• 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)

• 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.

• 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.

• Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Life Is

  Flaubert's Parrot ch. 13 (1984)

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

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Writing, Helping

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

• To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Helping, Certain

• 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

• ..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Looks, Information

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

• 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

  Book, Reading, Live Your Life

• I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Democrat, Term

• Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Grind, Promotion

  "The road not taken" by Julian Barnes, www.theguardian.com. October 8, 2005.

• Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Reading, Discovery

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

• The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Mind, Way

  "The road not taken" by Julian Barnes, www.theguardian.com. October 8, 2005.

• Great books are readable anyway. Dickens is readable. Jane Austen is readable. John Updike's readable. Hawthorne's readable. It's a meaningless term. You have to go the very extremes of literature, like Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," before you get a literary work that literally unreadable.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Literature, Hawthorne

  "Conversation: Julian Barnes, Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize". "Art Beat" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 8, 2011.

• 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

  Book, Writing, Doe

  Flaubert's Parrot ch. 1 (1984)

• But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Doe, Way

  "Love, etc". Book by Julian Barnes, 2000.

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin