Julian Barnes Quotes

186 quotes in 2503 categories

• The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
• What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
• When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.
• Irony ... may be defined as what people miss.
• Global warming is more of a blessing than a curse.
• When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course,…
• Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.
• This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they…
• You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may crash and burn,…
• There is a German word, Sehnsucht, which has no English equivalent; it means 'the longing for something'. It has Romantic and mystical connotations; C.S. Lewis…
• Why should anything happen when everything has happened?
• As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.
• Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?
• Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps,…
• I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it
• Those were the days in this country where H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle could have influence, and thats gone, thats true. But…
• It is a bizarre thought that in this [U.S. 2008] presidential cycle we could have had a woman in the White House we might have…
• Poets seem to write more easily about love than prose writers. For a start, they own that flexible ‘I’…. Then again, poets seem able to…
• History is the lies of the victors,
• Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.

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