List of Julian Barnes Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

The Writer Has Little Control Over Personal Temperament, None Over Historical Moment, And Is Only Partly In Charge Of His Or Her Own Aesthetic.

Grief Seems At First To Destroy Not Just All Patterns, But Also To Destroy A Belief That A Pattern Exists.

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!

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.

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.