Julian Barnes Quotes - Page 8

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• I have at times tried to imagine the despair which leads to suicide, attempted to conjure up the slew and slop of darkness in which only death appears as a pinprick of light: in other words, the exact opposite of the normal condition of life.

  Julian Barnes

  Suicide, Light, Opposites

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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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• He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.

  Julian Barnes

  Grief, Clouds, Wind

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• This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'.

  Julian Barnes

  Home, Long, Broken

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• 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)

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• But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.

  Julian Barnes

  Strong, Memories, Powerful

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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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• 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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• [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

  Hate, Stupid, Moving

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• 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

  Memories, Identity, Done

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• A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too.

  Julian Barnes

  Couple, Tasks, Breakfast

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• He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really mind--or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insulted a novel, a story, a poem that he loved, something visceral and volcanic occurred within him. He wasn't sure what this might mean--except perhaps that he had got life and art mixed up, back to front, upside down.

  Julian Barnes

  Art, Mean, Insulted Him

  "Homage To Hemingway" by Julian Barnes, www.newyorker.com. July 4, 2011.

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• The writer's life [is] full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life.

  Julian Barnes

  Half, Life Is, Defeat

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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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• But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

  Julian Barnes

  Rewards, Merit

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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

  Real, Philosophical, Past

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

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• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Ideas

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

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