julian-barnes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
e996dc3	Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.	reading flaubert-s-parrot julian-barnes book-quotes	Julian Barnes
d11c7d9	Though sometimes, first love cauterises the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue.	metaphor heartbreak heart first-love the-only-story julian-barnes trauma	Julian Barnes
9bc4792	Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn't make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can't imagine them having anything in common, or why they're still living together. But it's not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It's because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It's the only story.	love-story true-love relationships love meaningful validation the-only-story julian-barnes unrequited-love	Julian Barnes
1bf1e80	You're still in it. You'll always be in it. No, not literally. But in your heart. Nothing ever ends, not if it's gone that deep. You'll always be walking wounded. That's the only choice, after a while. Walking wounded, or dead. Don't you agree?	relationships walking-wounded the-only-story irrevocable julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
a023226	I think there's a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer.	the-only-story julian-barnes memory	Julian Barnes
e806c93	Because once you had been through certain things, their presence inside you never really disappeared.	the-only-story irrevocable julian-barnes ptsd	Julian Barnes
1f6bdbc	He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable.	memories life truth unanswerable unhappy-memories the-only-story julian-barnes memory	Julian Barnes
369b352	If Tony hadn't been fearful, hadn't counted on the approval of others for his own self-approval . . . and so on, through a succession of hypotheticals leading to the final one: so, for instance, if Tony hadn't been Tony.	in-another-life what-if the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes regret sad	Julian Barnes
84fa21d	"We're leaving," I told her one July afternoon. "We? You and I? Where are we going, young Master Paul? Do you have your belongings tied up in a red-spotted handkerchief on a stick?" --	humor dialogue the-only-story julian-barnes teasing	Julian Barnes
f6e6a18	My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been.	identity former-self the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past self	Julian Barnes
b7dc5e9	Once bitten, twice shy; twice bitten, forever shy.	once-bitten-twice-shy wounded the-only-story julian-barnes hurt	Julian Barnes
9c3d01a	You see--I hope you never get there yourself--but some of us get to the point in life where we realise that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters.	nothing-matters world-weary the-only-story julian-barnes nihilism	Julian Barnes
565b66b	But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions--and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives--then I plead guilty . . . And if we're talking about strong feelings that will never come again, I suppose it's possible to be nostalgic about remembered pain as well as remembered pleasure. And that opens up the field, doesn't it?	pain the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes memory pleasure nostalgia	Julian Barnes
1dc8c7d	He knew what they said of him locally: Oh, he likes to keep himself to himself. The phrase was descriptive, not judgemental. It was a principle of life the English still respected. And it wasn't just about privacy, about an Englishman's home--even a pebbledash semi--being his castle. It was about something more: about the self, and where you kept it, and who, if anyone, was allowed to fully see it.	inner-life the-only-story julian-barnes englishman the-self privacy	Julian Barnes
00711e9	The long answer was too time-consuming to give. The short answer was too painful. It went like this. It was a question of what heartbreak is, and how exactly the heart breaks, and what is left of it afterwards.	heartbreak heart painful the-only-story julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
927621b	From love's absolutism to love's absolution? No: I don't believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it's far too neat, a movie-maker's bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.	death love closure platitudes the-only-story julian-barnes realism redemption sad	Julian Barnes
d791f21	Still, I'm not curious enough to find out. At this stage I prefer not to know.	the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
89a7db8	He felt life more clearly too--even, perhaps especially, when he came to decide that it wasn't worth the candle.	suicide feelings life suicidal the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes sensitive	Julian Barnes
a1572e4	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.	literature youth reality life passionate the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes emotions young	Julian Barnes
9c107d3	I thought--at some level of my being, I actually thought--that I could go back to the beginning and change things. That I could make the blood flow backwards. I had the vanity to imagine--even if I didn't put it more strongly than this--that I could make Veronica like me again, and that it was important to do so.	irrevocable the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past	Julian Barnes
c6886c5	No, I was an odder old fool, grafting pathetic hopes of affection onto the least likely recipient in the world.	the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
c62df99	That next week was one of the loneliest of my life. There seemed nothing left to look forward to.	the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes lonely	Julian Barnes
8926cac	Still, as I tend to repeat, I have some instinct for survival, for self-preservation. And believing you have such an instinct is almost as good as actually having it, because it means you act in the same way.	self-preservation the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes belief survival survival-instinct	Julian Barnes
9aa7eb7	I replayed the words that would forever haunt me. As would Adrian's unfinished sentence: 'So, for instance, if Tony . . .' I knew I couldn't change, or mend, anything now.	irrevocable unfinished unfixable the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes sad	Julian Barnes
1a1ce50	Back in 'my day'--though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .	the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past	Julian Barnes
103d7ad	You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest.	truth reliability unreliable-narrator the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes meta truthfulness	Julian Barnes
1fa9a3d	But the very action of naming something that subsequently happens--of wishing specific evil, and that evil coming to pass--this still has a shiver of the otherworldly about it.	otherworldly prophetic the-sense-of-an-ending uncanny julian-barnes evil	Julian Barnes
3d8ef7e	Perhaps a sense of death is like a sense of humour. We all think the one we've got - or haven't got - is just about right, and appropriate to the proper understanding of life. It's everyone else who's out of step.	humour julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
2dceade	And one other thing: don't ask me about the weather. I don't much remember what the weather has been like during my life. True, I can remember how hot sun gave greater impetus to sex; how sudden snow delighted, and how cold, damp days set off those early symptoms that eventually led to a double hip replacement. But nothing significant in my life ever happened during, let alone because of, weather. So if you don't mind, meteorology will play no part in my story. Though you are free to deduce, when I am found playing grass-court tennis, that it was neither raining nor snowing at the time.	the-only-story julian-barnes weather	Julian Barnes
5f9d283	My parents' marriage, to my unforgiving nineteen-year-old eye, was a car crash of cliche. Though I would have to admit, as the one making the judgement, that a 'car crash of of cliche' is itself a cliche.	humor the-only-story julian-barnes language	Julian Barnes
f622e5d	And perhaps I I didn't even understand the young when I was young. That could be true too.	youth out-of-the-loop the-only-story julian-barnes outsider young	Julian Barnes
faa1df6	Nowadays, at the other end of life, I have a rule of thumb about whether or not two people are having an affair: if you think they might be, then they definitely are.	affairs the-only-story julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
1726bbc	So. I see where you're going--bus number 27 to a crossroads near Delphi. Look, I did not want, at any point, on any level, to kill my own father and sleep with my own mother. It's true that I wanted to sleep with Susan--and did so many times--and for a number of years thought of killing Gordon Macleod, but that is another part of the story. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think the Oedipus myth is precisely what it started off as: melodrama rather than psychology. In all my years of life I've never met anyone to whom it might apply. You think I'm being naive? You wish to point out that human motivation is deviously buried, and hides its mysterious workings from those who blindly submit to it? Perhaps so. But even--especially--Oedipus didn't to kill his father and sleep with his mother, did he? Oh yes he did! Oh no he didn't! Yes, let's just leave it as a pantomime exchange.	clever humor oedipal oedipus the-only-story julian-barnes psychology	Julian Barnes
38ef61a	Later--well, what came later, came later.	later the-only-story julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
930002a	"Sit yourself down," Joan instructed as we reached the the fag-fogged, gin-scented den that was nominally her sitting room." --	humor the-only-story julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
ba31f07	And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realise that there are other persons, and other tenses.	first-person present-tense the-only-story julian-barnes language	Julian Barnes
128906b	Whereas it seemed to me, back then, in the absolutism of my condition, that love had nothing to do with practicality; indeed, was its polar opposite. And the fact that it showed contempt for such banal considerations was part of its glory. Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.	love practicality the-only-story julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
ce59c1f	It is only a metaphor--or the worst of dreams; yet there are metaphors which sit more powerfully in the brain than remembered events.	metaphor reality the-only-story julian-barnes memory	Julian Barnes
901d20b	But that was the nature of relationships: there always seemed to be an imbalance of one sort or another.	relationships power-dynamics relationship-dynamics the-only-story julian-barnes	Julian Barnes
cb18497	And even when he guessed that the love stories of the misled and the forsaken had become a little less authentic with each retelling . . . even if this was the case, he was still moved. Indeed, he was more moved by the lives of the bereft and the unchosen than he was by stories of success in love.	love forsaken love-stories unlucky-in-love the-only-story julian-barnes unrequited-love	Julian Barnes

Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.

reading flaubert-s-parrot julian-barnes book-quotes

Julian Barnes

d11c7d9

Though sometimes, first love cauterises the heart, and all any searcher will find thereafter is scar tissue.

metaphor heartbreak heart first-love the-only-story julian-barnes trauma

Julian Barnes

9bc4792

Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn't make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can't imagine them having anything in common, or why they're still living together. But it's not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It's because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It's the only story.

love-story true-love relationships love meaningful validation the-only-story julian-barnes unrequited-love

Julian Barnes

1bf1e80

You're still in it. You'll always be in it. No, not literally. But in your heart. Nothing ever ends, not if it's gone that deep. You'll always be walking wounded. That's the only choice, after a while. Walking wounded, or dead. Don't you agree?

relationships walking-wounded the-only-story irrevocable julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

a023226

I think there's a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer.

the-only-story julian-barnes memory

Julian Barnes

e806c93

Because once you had been through certain things, their presence inside you never really disappeared.

the-only-story irrevocable julian-barnes ptsd

Julian Barnes

1f6bdbc

He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable.

memories life truth unanswerable unhappy-memories the-only-story julian-barnes memory

Julian Barnes

369b352

If Tony hadn't been fearful, hadn't counted on the approval of others for his own self-approval . . . and so on, through a succession of hypotheticals leading to the final one: so, for instance, if Tony hadn't been Tony.

in-another-life what-if the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes regret sad

Julian Barnes

84fa21d

"We're leaving," I told her one July afternoon. "We? You and I? Where are we going, young Master Paul? Do you have your belongings tied up in a red-spotted handkerchief on a stick?" --

humor dialogue the-only-story julian-barnes teasing

Julian Barnes

f6e6a18

My younger self had come back to shock my older self with what that self had been, or was, or was sometimes capable of being. And only recently I'd been going on about how the witnesses to our lives decrease, and with them our essential corroboration. Now I had some all too unwelcome corroboration of what I was, or had been.

identity former-self the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past self

Julian Barnes

b7dc5e9

Once bitten, twice shy; twice bitten, forever shy.

once-bitten-twice-shy wounded the-only-story julian-barnes hurt

Julian Barnes

9c3d01a

You see--I hope you never get there yourself--but some of us get to the point in life where we realise that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters.

nothing-matters world-weary the-only-story julian-barnes nihilism

Julian Barnes

565b66b

But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions--and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives--then I plead guilty . . . And if we're talking about strong feelings that will never come again, I suppose it's possible to be nostalgic about remembered pain as well as remembered pleasure. And that opens up the field, doesn't it?

pain the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes memory pleasure nostalgia

Julian Barnes

1dc8c7d

He knew what they said of him locally: Oh, he likes to keep himself to himself. The phrase was descriptive, not judgemental. It was a principle of life the English still respected. And it wasn't just about privacy, about an Englishman's home--even a pebbledash semi--being his castle. It was about something more: about the self, and where you kept it, and who, if anyone, was allowed to fully see it.

inner-life the-only-story julian-barnes englishman the-self privacy

Julian Barnes

00711e9

The long answer was too time-consuming to give. The short answer was too painful. It went like this. It was a question of what heartbreak is, and how exactly the heart breaks, and what is left of it afterwards.

heartbreak heart painful the-only-story julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

927621b

From love's absolutism to love's absolution? No: I don't believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it's far too neat, a movie-maker's bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.

death love closure platitudes the-only-story julian-barnes realism redemption sad

Julian Barnes

d791f21

Still, I'm not curious enough to find out. At this stage I prefer not to know.

the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

89a7db8

He felt life more clearly too--even, perhaps especially, when he came to decide that it wasn't worth the candle.

suicide feelings life suicidal the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes sensitive

Julian Barnes

a1572e4

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.

literature youth reality life passionate the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes emotions young

Julian Barnes

9c107d3

I thought--at some level of my being, I actually thought--that I could go back to the beginning and change things. That I could make the blood flow backwards. I had the vanity to imagine--even if I didn't put it more strongly than this--that I could make Veronica like me again, and that it was important to do so.

irrevocable the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past

Julian Barnes

c6886c5

No, I was an odder old fool, grafting pathetic hopes of affection onto the least likely recipient in the world.

the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

c62df99

That next week was one of the loneliest of my life. There seemed nothing left to look forward to.

the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes lonely

Julian Barnes

8926cac

Still, as I tend to repeat, I have some instinct for survival, for self-preservation. And believing you have such an instinct is almost as good as actually having it, because it means you act in the same way.

self-preservation the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes belief survival survival-instinct

Julian Barnes

9aa7eb7

I replayed the words that would forever haunt me. As would Adrian's unfinished sentence: 'So, for instance, if Tony . . .' I knew I couldn't change, or mend, anything now.

irrevocable unfinished unfixable the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes sad

Julian Barnes

1a1ce50

Back in 'my day'--though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, still less do I now . . .

the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes the-past

Julian Barnes

103d7ad

You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest.

truth reliability unreliable-narrator the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes meta truthfulness

Julian Barnes

1fa9a3d

But the very action of naming something that subsequently happens--of wishing specific evil, and that evil coming to pass--this still has a shiver of the otherworldly about it.

otherworldly prophetic the-sense-of-an-ending uncanny julian-barnes evil

Julian Barnes

3d8ef7e

Perhaps a sense of death is like a sense of humour. We all think the one we've got - or haven't got - is just about right, and appropriate to the proper understanding of life. It's everyone else who's out of step.

humour julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

2dceade

And one other thing: don't ask me about the weather. I don't much remember what the weather has been like during my life. True, I can remember how hot sun gave greater impetus to sex; how sudden snow delighted, and how cold, damp days set off those early symptoms that eventually led to a double hip replacement. But nothing significant in my life ever happened during, let alone because of, weather. So if you don't mind, meteorology will play no part in my story. Though you are free to deduce, when I am found playing grass-court tennis, that it was neither raining nor snowing at the time.

the-only-story julian-barnes weather

Julian Barnes

5f9d283

My parents' marriage, to my unforgiving nineteen-year-old eye, was a car crash of cliche. Though I would have to admit, as the one making the judgement, that a 'car crash of of cliche' is itself a cliche.

humor the-only-story julian-barnes language

Julian Barnes

f622e5d

And perhaps I I didn't even understand the young when I was young. That could be true too.

youth out-of-the-loop the-only-story julian-barnes outsider young

Julian Barnes

faa1df6

Nowadays, at the other end of life, I have a rule of thumb about whether or not two people are having an affair: if you think they might be, then they definitely are.

affairs the-only-story julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

1726bbc

So. I see where you're going--bus number 27 to a crossroads near Delphi. Look, I did not want, at any point, on any level, to kill my own father and sleep with my own mother. It's true that I wanted to sleep with Susan--and did so many times--and for a number of years thought of killing Gordon Macleod, but that is another part of the story. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think the Oedipus myth is precisely what it started off as: melodrama rather than psychology. In all my years of life I've never met anyone to whom it might apply. You think I'm being naive? You wish to point out that human motivation is deviously buried, and hides its mysterious workings from those who blindly submit to it? Perhaps so. But even--especially--Oedipus didn't to kill his father and sleep with his mother, did he? Oh yes he did! Oh no he didn't! Yes, let's just leave it as a pantomime exchange.

clever humor oedipal oedipus the-only-story julian-barnes psychology

Julian Barnes

38ef61a

Later--well, what came later, came later.

later the-only-story julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

930002a

"Sit yourself down," Joan instructed as we reached the the fag-fogged, gin-scented den that was nominally her sitting room." --

humor the-only-story julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

ba31f07

And first love always happens in the overwhelming first person. How can it not? Also, in the overwhelming present tense. It takes us time to realise that there are other persons, and other tenses.

first-person present-tense the-only-story julian-barnes language

Julian Barnes

128906b

Whereas it seemed to me, back then, in the absolutism of my condition, that love had nothing to do with practicality; indeed, was its polar opposite. And the fact that it showed contempt for such banal considerations was part of its glory. Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.

love practicality the-only-story julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

ce59c1f

It is only a metaphor--or the worst of dreams; yet there are metaphors which sit more powerfully in the brain than remembered events.

metaphor reality the-only-story julian-barnes memory

Julian Barnes

901d20b

But that was the nature of relationships: there always seemed to be an imbalance of one sort or another.

relationships power-dynamics relationship-dynamics the-only-story julian-barnes

Julian Barnes

cb18497

And even when he guessed that the love stories of the misled and the forsaken had become a little less authentic with each retelling . . . even if this was the case, he was still moved. Indeed, he was more moved by the lives of the bereft and the unchosen than he was by stories of success in love.

love forsaken love-stories unlucky-in-love the-only-story julian-barnes unrequited-love

Julian Barnes