“And mental states may be inferred from actions. The tyrant rarely sends a handwritten note requesting the elimination of an enemy.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“my desire to ascribe responsibility might be more a reflection of my own cast of mind than a fair analysis of what… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“A facetious if logical question comes into George's mind, from where he cannot tell, unless as a reaction to all this unwonted… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I didn't doubt for a moment that she had read them all, or that they were the right books to own. Further,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Studies of cancer patients show that attitudes of mind have very little effect on clinical outcome. We may say we are fighting… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. This is how it… — 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 of her splayed beneath me or arched above me. Daily intimacy made me proud of knowing about make-up, clothes policy, the feminine razor, and the mystery and consequences of a woman’s periods. I found myself envying… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
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 to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash? But sometimes it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed. Then, at some point, sooner or later, for… — 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, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire – and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company… — 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 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 call, the telegram--were marked "For Emergency Use Only." So my parents waved me off into the unknown, and their news bulletins about me would have been restricted to "Yes, he's arrived safely,"and "Last time we heard… — 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 Image
