How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives:… — 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
I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have… — 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
“You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a… — 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
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
I'm interested in such things as the difference between how we perceive the world and what the world turns out to be.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I… — 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
