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Life Quotes by Julian Barnes

93 Life quotes by Julian Barnes

All Life quotes Julian Barnes’s page

Julian Barnes writes that every ending is just the start of another story, like a new chapter after a goodbye. He sees memory as the core of identity, the things we have done and remember. He also compares life to a mix of addition, subtraction, and multiplication, showing how each event changes the whole.

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The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

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When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

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Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

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“The heart of my life; the life of my heart.”

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“... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.”

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But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.

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

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This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.

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“When he's cheerful his tongue runs away with him, and he's depressed he can be unkind. So it's common sense not to…

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“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents- were they the…

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Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we…

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“What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in…

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“There is the question of accumulation (...) just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed…

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“I suppose the truth is that, yes, I'm not odd enough not to have done the things I've ended up doing with…

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“Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes,…

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“My own [story] is the simplest ... it hardly amounts to more than a convincing proof of my existence - and yet…

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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…

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When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape…

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How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life…

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“For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn’t work out – perhaps especially when it doesn’t work…

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“Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives:…

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When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping…

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Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven't. Later, into those who have…

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“Try as I could -which wasn't very hard- I rarely ended up fantasising a markedly different life from the one that has…

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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…

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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…

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“Our lack of originality is something we usefully forget as we hunch over our—to us—ever-fascinating lives. My friend M., leaving his wife…

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“When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense…

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When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense…

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“I wish life was like banking,' I said. 'I don't mean it's straightforward. Some of it's incredibly complicated. But you can understand…

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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…

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“You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and…

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“In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without…

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“Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in…

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“5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a…

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“And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be…

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“When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense…

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“Books are not life, however much we may wish they were”

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“Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death. ”

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“Is it splendid, or stupid, to take life seriously?”

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More by Julian Barnes

“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time,…

“I settled into a contented routine of working, spending my free time with Veronica and, back in my student room, wanking explosively to fantasies…

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

“There is only good vodka and very good vodka—there is no such thing as bad vodka.”

Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.

How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves.…

You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon…

“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely,…

“Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island,…

“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…

“My train was late, slowed by the usual Sunday engineering work. I got home in the early evening. I remember that I had a…

In life, every ending is just the start of another story.

“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.…

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…

“And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh,…