A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists. — 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
You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of… — 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
Remember the botched brothel-visit in L’Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the… — 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… — 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
“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
