I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Theories were clean and convincing and comprehensible. Life was messy and full of nonsense.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication? — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of… — 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
“I think that in life you have to discover what you're good at, recognise what you can't do, decide what you want,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Oliver used to have a theory he called Love, etc.: in other words the world divides into people for whom love is… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“how weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Am I to be a king, or just a pig?' Gustave writes in his Intimate Notebook . At nineteen, it always looks… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that meant something new was being born.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded… — 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
“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Life was the cat that dragged the parrot downstairs by its tail; his head banged against every step.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then… — 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
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
Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The writer's life [is] full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“He died a modern death, in hospital,…after medical science had prolonged his life to a point where the terms on which it… — julian barnes Copy Share Image
“For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn't work out-perhaps especially when it doesn't work out-promises that… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“In a novel, all his life's anxieties, his mixture of strength and weakness, his potential for hysteria - all would have been… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young, erode. We end up belonging to the same category,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A… — 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
Memory is identity…You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
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… — 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
![“Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--it's not useful--to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. [p. 69]” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/90c/julian-barnes-522_life_who-was-it-said-that-memory-is-what-we-t_368829.png)
![“Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65]” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b09/julian-barnes-522_certainty_discovering-for-example-that-as-witnesse_2054696.png)
![“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.” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/176/julian-barnes-522_buried_the-writer-s-life-is-full-of-frailty-and_181140.png)
![“Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young, erode. We end up belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself. [p. 66]” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/e89/julian-barnes-522_life_those-little-age-differentials-so-crucia_795706.png)
