Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough? — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
[Literature is] a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and thats gone,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was… — 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