Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Lovers are like Siamese twins, two bodies with a single soul; but if one dies before the other, the survivor has a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Next to not living with those one loves, the worst torture is living with those one doesn't love.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Tertullian said of Christian belief that it was true because it was impossible. Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think,… — 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
Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity?… — 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
What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“With a lover, a wife, when you find the worst - be it infidelity or lack of love, madness or the suicidal… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Part of love is preparing for death... Afterwards comes the madness. And then the loneliness... [People say] you'll come out of 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… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“- he couldn't believe how falling love with Martha made things simpler. No, that wasn't the right word, unless 'simpler' also included… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Initially, you continue doing what you used to do with her, out of familiarity, love, the need for a pattern. Soon, you… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“It had seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with terminal illness… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“He loved his mother: doesn't that warm your silly, sentimental, twentieth-century heart? He loved his father. He loved his sister. He loved… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“When she dies, you are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death. You feel confirmed in your love… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Anyway... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I love you." For a start, we'd better put these words on a high shelf; in a square box behind glass which… — 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
When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it… — 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
“It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility;… — 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
And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you’d do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards… — 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
![“Part of love is preparing for death... Afterwards comes the madness. And then the loneliness... [People say] you'll come out of it... And you do come out of it, that's true. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift…” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b06/julian-barnes-522_death_part-of-love-is-preparing-for-death-afte_1719579.jpg)
