“It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“How do you turn catastrophe into art? Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have a play on the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Though I remember, sharply, last things. The last book she read. The last play (and film, and concert, and opera, and art… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Better to take life seriously, and reach for light solutions. Satire, for instance; or suicide. Why did people hold so fast to… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“The great French diarist Jules Renard (1864-1910) had small interest in non-literary art forms. When Ravel approached him wanting to set five… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I was also, slowly, to learn that there were painters whom you grew out of (like the Pre-Raphaelites); painters you grew into… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“I settled into a contented routine of working, spending my free time with Veronica and, back in my student room, wanking explosively to fantasies… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously. — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“There is only good vodka and very good vodka—there is no such thing as bad vodka.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share
Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can. — Julian Barnes Copy Share
How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“In those years before mobile phones, email and Skype, travelers depended on the rudimentary communications system known as the postcard. Other methods--the long-distance phone… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“My train was late, slowed by the usual Sunday engineering work. I got home in the early evening. I remember that I had a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“Indeed, isn’t the whole business of ascribing responsibility kind of a cop-out? We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
