When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Lovers are like Siamese twins, two bodies with a single soul; but if one dies before the other, the survivor has a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn't work out-perhaps especially when it doesn't work out-promises that… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“The main reason I felt foolish and humiliated was because of - what had I called it to myself, only a few… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you’d do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Listen to them again: ‘I love you.’ Subject, verb, object: the unadorned, impregnable sentence. The subject is a short word, implying the… — 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
Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning. — 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
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Tertullian said of Christian belief that it was true because it was impossible. Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.” — 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
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
“Part of love is preparing for death... Afterwards comes the madness. And then the loneliness... [People say] you'll come out of it...… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“With a lover, a wife, when you find the worst - be it infidelity or lack of love, madness or the suicidal… — 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 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
