“Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that’s been more or less agreed upon. Or perhaps it’s that same paradox again:… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“...how time first grounds us and then confounds us....give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“It took a while, but I remember the moment – or rather, the suddenly arriving argument – which made it less likely… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Mas o tempo… o tempo primeiro fixa-nos e depois confunde-nos. Pensávamos que estávamos a ser adultos quando estávamos só a ser prudentes.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“...perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“The time-deniers say: forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on. I know this much:… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“But time … how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I must confess that in all the times I read Madame Bovary, I never noticed the heroine's rainbow eyes. Should I have?… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“And in these times, people were always in danger of becoming less than fully themselves. If you terrorised them enough, they became… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“....in this country shadings of class resist time longer than differentials in age” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“how weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“From The Noise of Time: What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves--the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“When she dies, you are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death. You feel confirmed in your love… — 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
