The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon by a professional critic, then what point is… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape… — 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
“By now, I probably preferred secondhand books to new ones. In America such items were disparagingly referred to as “previously owned”; but… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
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… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in… — 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
