“Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young, erode. We end up belonging to the same category,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that meant something new was being born.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of… — 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
“Our lack of originality is something we usefully forget as we hunch over our—to us—ever-fascinating lives. My friend M., leaving his wife… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be… — 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 blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy,… — 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
I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. ...the words took me back… — 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
When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense… — 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
“5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Oliver used to have a theory he called Love, etc.: in other words the world divides into people for whom love is… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I think that in life you have to discover what you're good at, recognise what you can't do, decide what you want,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death. ” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Am I to be a king, or just a pig?' Gustave writes in his Intimate Notebook . At nineteen, it always looks… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“When he's cheerful his tongue runs away with him, and he's depressed he can be unkind. So it's common sense not to… — 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
