“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
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — 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
“...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
“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
“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
“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
You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical… — 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
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're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in… — 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
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
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
“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
“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 we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and thats gone,… — 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
“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
“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
Life … is a bit like reading. … If all your responses to a book have already been duplicated and expanded upon… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“When we're onstage we're not literature, we're sitcom. You have to have catchphrases.” — 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
“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
