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

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 call, the telegram--were marked "For Emergency Use Only." So my parents wa...

Julian Barnes

Logiškai mąstė, o paskui elgėsi logiška išvada. Tačiau daugelis iš mūsų, įtariu, daro priešingai: priima instinktyvų sprendimą, paskui kuria priežasčių infrastruktūrą jam pateisinti. O rezultatą pavadina sveiku protu.

Julian Barnes

Is there anything more plausible than a second hand?

Julian Barnes

In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our lives -- and time itself -- would speed up. How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun,...

Julian Barnes

Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death.

Julian Barnes

But art and religion will always shadow one another through the abstract nouns they both invoke: truth, seriousness, imagination, sympathy, morality, transcendence.

Julian Barnes

The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

Julian Barnes

The mechanism of natural selection depends on the survival, not of the strongest, nor the most intelligent, but of the most adaptable.

Julian Barnes

When we fall in love, we hope - both egotistically and altruistically - that we shall be finally, truly seen: judged and approved. Of course, love does not always bring approval: being seen may just as well lead to a thumbs-down and a season in hell.

Julian Barnes

The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: 'Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.' When I first came across this, I thought it witty; now I find it—as I do many aphorisms—a slick untruth. Life and...

Julian Barnes

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.

Julian Barnes

But life never lets you go, does it? You can't put down life the way you put down a book.

Julian Barnes

In life, every ending is just the start of another story.

Julian Barnes

Naturalness onstage is just as much an artifice as naturalism in the novel

Julian Barnes

There is a grotesquerie to grief as well. You lose the sense of your existence being rational, or justifiable. You feel absurd.

Julian Barnes

Throw off your grief,' doubters imply, 'and we can all go back to pretending death doesn't exist, or at least is comfortably far away.

Julian Barnes

The final tormenting, unanswerable question: what is 'success' in mourning?

Julian Barnes

There is a German word, , which has no English equivalent; it means 'the longing for something'. It has Romantic and mystical connotations; C.S. Lewis defined it as the 'inconsolable longing' in the human heart for 'we know not what'. It seems rather...

Julian Barnes

The constant tug between nature and civilization is what keeps on our toes. Though of course, that did rather beg the question of how you defined nature and how you defined civilization.

Julian Barnes

The dangerous charm of GPC was that everything in the world could be called up; if you didn't look out, a couple of sessions might turn you from a serious enquirer into a mere gape-mouthed browser.

Julian Barnes

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

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