Quotes by Julian Barnes

About Julian Barnes:

Julian Patrick Barnes is an English writer. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending (2011), and three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005). He has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told abo...

Julian Barnes

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

Julian Barnes

you find yourself repeating, ‘They grow up so quickly, don’t they?’ when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.

Julian Barnes

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure ...

Julian Barnes

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

Julian Barnes

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

Julian Barnes

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.

Julian Barnes

You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?

Julian Barnes

Šeimyninės laimės paslaptį sudaro ne jos pilnumas ar bent jau ne gyvenimas kartu su visais jos nariais

Julian Barnes

This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'...

Julian Barnes

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which...

Julian Barnes

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point w...

Julian Barnes

What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in a book?

Julian Barnes

You can take Lucas to watch football when he’s older,’ she once told me. Ah, the rheumy-eyed grandpa on the terraces inducting the lad into the mysteries of soccer: how to loathe people wearing different coloured shirts, how to feign injury, how ...

Julian Barnes

Mes baigėme mokyklą, pasižadėjome draugauti visą gyvenimą ir nuėjome skirtingais keliais

Julian Barnes

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and the...

Julian Barnes

Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent fr...

Julian Barnes

May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.

Julian Barnes

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

Julian Barnes

History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.

Julian Barnes

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ... 'Finn?' '"...

Julian Barnes

Author Bio

  • NameJulian Barnes
  • DescriptionEnglish writer
  • AliasesBarnes, Julian; J. Barnes; J Barnes
  • BornJanuary 19, 1946
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Translator; Novelist; Essayist
  • WorksThe Sense Of An Ending
  • AwardsAustrian State Prize For European Literature; Man Booker Prize; Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize