“I used to believe, when I was 'just' a reader, that writers, because they wrote books where truth was found, because they… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Grandpa, in his male armchair, deaf aid occasionally whistling and pipe making a hubble-bubble noise as he sucked on it, would shake… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We all know objective truth is not obtainable, that when some event occurs we shall have a multiplicity of subjective truths which… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“[Literature is] the best way of telling the truth; it’s a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth… — 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
Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I think a great book—leaving aside other qualities such as narrative power, characterization, style, and so on—is a book that describes the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“I suppose the truth is that, yes, I'm not odd enough not to have done the things I've ended up doing with… — 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
“What does the novel do? It tells beautiful, shapely lies which enclose hard, exact truths.” — 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
