“The best fiction rarely provides answers; but it does formulate the questions exceptionally well.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you are writing fiction your task is to reflect the fullest complications of the world — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I have no luddite prejudice against new technology; it's just that books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: 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… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Do you know what Nabokov said about adultery in his lecture on Madame Bovary? He said it was 'a most conventional way… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“...perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I didn't doubt for a moment that she had read them all, or that they were the right books to own. Further,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“By now, I probably preferred secondhand books to new ones. In America such items were disparagingly referred to as “previously owned”; but… — 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's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than… — 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've never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This… — 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
“I think a great book—leaving aside other qualities such as narrative power, characterization, style, and so on—is a book that describes the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Do the books that writers don't write matter? It's easy to forget them, to assume that the apocryphal bibliography must contain nothing… — 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
To own a certain book - and to choose it without help - is to define yourself. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
..books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“What does the novel do? It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“[Literature is] the best way of telling the truth; it’s a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth… — 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
![“[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/0e8/julian-barnes-522_assemblage_literature-is-a-process-of-producing-gra_1198077.png)
![“It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/6f7/julian-barnes-522_books_it-s-the-best-way-of-telling-the-truth-i_2016681.jpg)
![“[Literature is] the best way of telling the truth; it’s a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts.” quote by Julian Barnes](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/8aa/julian-barnes-522_books_literature-is-the-best-way-of-telling-th_1120031.jpg)
