Youth Quotes by Julian Barnes

13 Youth quotes by Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes approaches youth with his characteristic wit and nuance. This short collection gathers his most striking observations, giving a quick sense of how he balances humor and seriousness when reflecting on the early chapters of life.

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“Games are for childhood, and sometimes I think I lost my childhood young.”

Julian Barnes

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Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

Julian Barnes

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“I don't ever want to get old. Spare me that. Have you the power? No, even you don't have the power, alas.”

Julian Barnes

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You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of…

Julian Barnes

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Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?

Julian Barnes

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“... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.”

Julian Barnes

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“There's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.”

Julian Barnes

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It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different…

Julian Barnes

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Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about…

Julian Barnes

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Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable…

Julian Barnes

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When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to…

Julian Barnes

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“For some people, the time differentials established in youth never really disappear: the elder remains the elder, even when both are dribbling…

Julian Barnes

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In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the…

Julian Barnes

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“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time,…

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“I settled into a contented routine of working, spending my free time with Veronica and, back in my student room, wanking explosively to fantasies…

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The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

Julian Barnes

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“There is only good vodka and very good vodka—there is no such thing as bad vodka.”

Julian Barnes

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Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can.

Julian Barnes

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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

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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

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“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

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“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

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“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