Love Quotes by Julian Barnes

The more you learn, the less you fear.

— Julian Barnes

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

— Julian Barnes

History is the lies of the victors,

— Julian Barnes

Every love story is a potential grief story.

— Julian Barnes

I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it

— Julian Barnes

Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.

— Julian Barnes

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.

— Julian Barnes

“Lovers are like Siamese twins, two bodies with a single soul; but if one dies before the other, the survivor has a…

— Julian Barnes

“I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her.”

— Julian Barnes

Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.

— Julian Barnes

“Tertullian said of Christian belief that it was true because it was impossible. Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.”

— Julian Barnes

“Next to not living with those one loves, the worst torture is living with those one doesn't love.”

— Julian Barnes

“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

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity?…

— Julian Barnes

“Oliver used to have a theory he called Love, etc.: in other words the world divides into people for whom love is…

— Julian Barnes

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think,…

— Julian Barnes

People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your…

— Julian Barnes

we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it…

— Julian Barnes

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth.…

— Julian Barnes

When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and…

— Julian Barnes

“He loved his mother: doesn't that warm your silly, sentimental, twentieth-century heart? He loved his father. He loved his sister. He loved…

— Julian Barnes

“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

We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as…

— Julian Barnes

Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets…

— Julian Barnes

“poets seem able to turn bad love – selfish, shitty love – into good love poetry. Prose writers lack this power of…

— Julian Barnes

“Initially, you continue doing what you used to do with her, out of familiarity, love, the need for a pattern. Soon, you…

— Julian Barnes

“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

“For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn’t work out – perhaps especially when it doesn’t work…

— Julian Barnes

“I love you." For a start, we'd better put these words on a high shelf; in a square box behind glass which…

— Julian Barnes

“That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to…

— Julian Barnes

“Anyway... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me,…

— Julian Barnes

“When she dies, you are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death. You feel confirmed in your love…

— Julian Barnes

“What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always…

— Julian Barnes

“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

“With a lover, a wife, when you find the worst - be it infidelity or lack of love, madness or the suicidal…

— Julian Barnes

What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always…

— Julian Barnes

“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

“- he couldn't believe how falling love with Martha made things simpler. No, that wasn't the right word, unless 'simpler' also included…

— Julian Barnes

“The main reason I felt foolish and humiliated was because of - what had I called it to myself, only a few…

— Julian Barnes

Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they…

— Julian Barnes