I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance:… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Is any novelist going to recognize the moment when he or she has nothing more to say? It is a brave thing… — 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
If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“And does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce?No, that’s too grand, too considered a process.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“But the moment I realized that Pomiane was not just sympathetic but deeply on my side came in his recipe for Bœuf… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“For some people, the time differentials established in youth never really disappear: the elder remains the elder, even when both are dribbling… — 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
We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term… — 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
