I'm interested in such things as the difference between how we perceive the world and what the world turns out to be.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does:otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I… — 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 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
He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his… — 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
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
I'm one of those writers who started off writing novels and came to writing short stories later, partly because I didn't have… — 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
