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f9aa5f2
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Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.
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life
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Julian Barnes |
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da2bad7
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This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.
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Julian Barnes |
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0a448a0
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History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
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Julian Barnes |
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d0df863
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What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.
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nostalgia
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Julian Barnes |
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5f15f19
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Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.
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life
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Julian Barnes |
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ccd155a
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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 futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.
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Julian Barnes |
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2311820
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Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.
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men
women
fear
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Julian Barnes |
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7c1ab25
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To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness - though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
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stupidity
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Julian Barnes |
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2f462a7
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I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another. How could we not,except in a world of perfect parents, siblings, neighbours, companions? And then there is the question on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: whether we admit it or repress it,and how this affects our dealings with others.Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it;some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and there are tho..
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Julian Barnes |
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cc4c00c
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The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
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politics
patriotism
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Julian Barnes |
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32fefae
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We live in time - it holds us and molds us - but I never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's ma..
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Julian Barnes |
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a0cb349
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Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?
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Julian Barnes |
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b3c40d7
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When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that?
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Julian Barnes |
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c5d3c3b
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Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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Julian Barnes |
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3ae8655
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Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got...
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Julian Barnes |
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15e75bb
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I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.
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time-passing
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Julian Barnes |
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3147d05
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I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. This is how it will be when I grow up. I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her, and then her and her and her. I shall live as people in novels live and have lived. Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance. However...who said that thing about..
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Julian Barnes |
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264b461
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on grief) And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
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Julian Barnes |
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a9eb05c
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Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They weren't. They weren't even one of the questions.
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Julian Barnes |
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b06ae65
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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.
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time
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Julian Barnes |
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b65e64a
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I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded--and how pitiful that was.
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Julian Barnes |
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4065dda
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When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape - into different countries, mores, speech patterns - but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.
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words
literature
reading
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Julian Barnes |
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8e44b73
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He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.
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men
relationships
women
love
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Julian Barnes |
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6c14311
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The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
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writing
writers
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Julian Barnes |
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2cc0572
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And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability.
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time
pleasure
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Julian Barnes |
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eb95d96
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That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.
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Julian Barnes |
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c0394b5
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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.
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love
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Julian Barnes |
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73f2d8c
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The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life."
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Julian Barnes |
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d8eec19
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I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.
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regret
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Julian Barnes |
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26553d4
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What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never re..
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Julian Barnes |
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55e38e3
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And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.
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Julian Barnes |
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64c9095
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A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.
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Julian Barnes |
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f3b8f01
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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 to a fire balloon: do you prefer crash and burn, or burn and crash? But sometimes it works, and something new is made, and the world is changed. Then, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. and what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. this ..
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Julian Barnes |
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bbcf530
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Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
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Julian Barnes |
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816edd7
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Memories of childhood were the dreams that stayed with you after you woke.
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childhood-memories
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Julian Barnes |
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caff92d
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We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.
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Julian Barnes |
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3df9c3d
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You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible, whereas the heart, the human heart, I'm afraid, looks a fucking mess.
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heart
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Julian Barnes |
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07934c7
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When you're young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can't make up their minds. Perhaps it's a way of admitting that things can't ever bear the same certainty again.
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seasons
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Julian Barnes |
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9add095
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Every love story is a potential grief story.
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Julian Barnes |
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9dea3c9
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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, divorced, widowed; children growing away from you, friends dying. You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire - and desirability. You may go further and consider your own approaching death, which, despite what company you may muster, can only be faced alone. But all this is looking ahead. What ..
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Julian Barnes |
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28e66c4
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Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.
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time
history
meaning
life
philosophy
rest
memory
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Julian Barnes |
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14603f9
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Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.
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Julian Barnes |
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160f7f5
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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?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)"
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history
politics
triumphalism
victors
imperialism
memory
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Julian Barnes |
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e604c3c
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Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.
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Julian Barnes |