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
In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — 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
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
[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
“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
“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
“Of course, there were other sorts of literature -- theoretical, self-referencial, lachrymosely autobiographical -- but they were just dry wanks.” — 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
“[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
Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Taxi-drivers in Frankfurt are said to dislike the annual Book Fair because literary folk, instead of being shuttled to prostitutes like respectable… — 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
“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
“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
“Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in… — 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
“Though I remember, sharply, last things. The last book she read. The last play (and film, and concert, and opera, and art… — 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
“Flaubert teaches you to gave upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on… — 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
“I used to believe, when I was 'just' a reader, that writers, because they wrote books where truth was found, because they… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I must confess that in all the times I read Madame Bovary, I never noticed the heroine's rainbow eyes. Should I have?… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from… — 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
Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough? — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements… — 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 feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon… — 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 Image
“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 Image
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“There is only good vodka and very good vodka—there is no such thing as bad vodka.” — 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
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
![“[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/quotes/img-quotes/0e8/julian-barnes-522_assemblage_literature-is-a-process-of-producing-gra_1198077.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/quotes/img-quotes/8aa/julian-barnes-522_books_literature-is-the-best-way-of-telling-th_1120031.jpg)
