Julian Barnes Quotes - Page 7

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• 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.

  Julian Barnes

  Writing, Literature, Realizing

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

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• In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.

  Julian Barnes

  Art, Order, Different

  Julian Barnes, Vanessa Guignery, Ryan Roberts (2009). “Conversations with Julian Barnes”, p.65, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Mean, Names

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• 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

  Love You, Order, Names

  Julian Barnes (2010). “Arthur & George”, p.308, Random House

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• 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

  Children, Adults, Negative

  "Le Grand Meaulnes revisited" by Julian Barnes, www.theguardian.com. April 13, 2012.

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• WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

  Julian Barnes

  Genius, Syphilis, Century

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• I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Fall, Writing

  "Julian Barnes: The sense of another ending". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2013.

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• I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.

  Julian Barnes

  Hate, Way, Serious

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.33, Random House

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• I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

  Julian Barnes

  Thinking, Morbid, Fear Of Death

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• Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Patterns, Firsts

  "Julian Barnes: The sense of another ending". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. March 30, 2013.

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• You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash? But sometimes it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed. Then, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. and 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, Fire, Two

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

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• Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior.

  Julian Barnes

  Fashion, Girlfriend, Jobs

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• When we're young, everyone over the age of thirty looks middle-aged, everyone over fifty antique. And time, as it goes by, confirms that we weren't that wrong. Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young erode. We end up all belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself.

  Julian Barnes

  Age, Looks, Fifty

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• I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

  Julian Barnes

  Years, Littles, Made

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.144, Random House

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• 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

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• Whisky, I find, helps clarity of thought. And reduces pain. It has the additional virtue of making you drunk or, if taken in sufficient quantity, very drunk.

  Julian Barnes

  Pain, Taken, Drunk

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.97, Random House

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• When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements … while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.

  Julian Barnes

  Regret, Thinking, Ignorant

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

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• You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?

  Julian Barnes

  Long, Done, Moments

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.149, Random House

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• 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

  Waiting, Firsts, Would Be

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• Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary

  Julian Barnes

  Powerful, Responsibility, Sole

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.104, Random House

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• There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.

  Julian Barnes

  Genius, Young, Fascinated

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• The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

  Julian Barnes

  Historical, Littles, Moments

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• It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

  Julian Barnes

  People, Littles, Easy

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

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• 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

  Opposites, Common Sense, Decision

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• 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

  Giving, Feelings, Age

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