|
0a34b25
|
But ignoring the bad things makes you end up believing that bad things never happen. You are always surprised by them. It surprises you that guns kill, that money corrupts, that snow falls in winter. Such naivety can be charming; alas, it can also be perilous.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
d45ca17
|
You realize that you want official interference into other people's lives but not into your own. You also realize that your truthfulness has become dangerously flexible.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
b0254be
|
mental states can be inferred from actions. That's in history--Henry VIII and all that. Whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true: that you can infer past actions from current mental states.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
5d2c7d0
|
The orthodoxy runs, that if a marriage is founded on less than perfect truth it will always come to light. I don't believe that. Marriage moves you further away from the examination of truth, not nearer to it.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
cc7a401
|
And who does not want their love authenticated?
|
|
love
the-only-story
|
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.
|
|
julian-barnes
nihilism
nothing-matters
the-only-story
world-weary
|
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?
|
|
julian-barnes
memory
nostalgia
pain
pleasure
the-sense-of-an-ending
|
Julian Barnes |
|
30d65ec
|
Jedan drugi prijatelj je umro, iznenada, katastrofalno, pored pokretne trake za prtljag na nekom stranom aerodromu. Njegova zena je otisla po kolica, kada se vratila, gomila ljudi je bila okupljena oko necega. Mozda se otvorio i prosuo neki kofer. Ali ne, otvorio se i prosuo njen muz, i vec je bio mrtav. Godinu ili dve kasnije, kada je moja zena umrla, napisala mi je: ,,.
|
|
|
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
julian-barnes
regret
sad
the-sense-of-an-ending
what-if
|
Julian Barnes |
|
fbe13ab
|
Yes, of course we were pretentious--what else is youth for?
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
b7dc5e9
|
Once bitten, twice shy; twice bitten, forever shy.
|
|
hurt
julian-barnes
once-bitten-twice-shy
the-only-story
wounded
|
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.
|
|
former-self
identity
julian-barnes
self
the-past
the-sense-of-an-ending
|
Julian Barnes |
|
a956a82
|
And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse--a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred--about my whole life.
|
|
life
regret
remorse
self-hatred
self-pity
the-sense-of-an-ending
|
Julian Barnes |
|
8d517f5
|
We're all just looking for a place of safety. And if you don't find one, then you have to learn how to pass the time.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
36e2ef6
|
Oi arnetes tou khronou lene: ta saranta den einai tipota, sta penenta eisai sto anthos tes elikias sou, ta exenta einai semera san ta palia saranta, kai paei legontas. Auto pou xero ego einai oti uparkhei o antikeimenikos khronos, uparkhei omos kai o upokeimenikos, autos pou ton phoras ste mesa meria tou karpou sou, ekei pou khtupaei o sphugmos. Ki autos o prosopikos khronos, pou einai o alethinos, metrietai ste skhese pou ekheis me te mnem..
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
4615fac
|
What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves--the music of our being--which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
3102cc1
|
So, you see, we're a played-out generation. All the best ones went. We were left with the lesser ones. It's always like that in war. That's why it's up to your generation now.' But I don't feel part
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
08e8568
|
We didn't do anger in my family. We did ironic comment, snappy rejoinder, satirical elaboration; we did exact words forbidding a certain action, and more severe ones condemning what had already taken place. But for anything beyond this, we did the thing enjoined upon the English middle classes for generations. We internalised our rage, our anger, our contempt. We spoke words under our breath.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
a7ea4cf
|
There were two ways of looking at life;or two extremes of viewpoint, anyway, with a continuum between them. One proposed that every human action necessarily carried with it the obliteration of every other action which might have been performed instead; life therefore consisted of a succession of small and large choices, expressions of free will, so that the individual was like the captain of some paddle steamer chugging down the mighty Miss..
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
a36e0ec
|
It's a condition of our mortality. We have codes of manners to allay and minimise it, jokes and routines, and so many forms of diversion and distraction. But there is panic and pandemonium waiting to break out inside all of us, of this I am convinced. I've seen it roar out among the dying, as a last protest against the human condition and its chronic sadness. But it is there in the most balanced and rational of us. You just need the right c..
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
29d812d
|
One small revenge might be to die and show no signs of having died.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
a710b2e
|
Work would be something I jogged along with; love would be my life.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
596835a
|
You remembered your past in cheerful terms because this validated your existence. You didn't have to see your life as any kind of triumph - his own had hardly been that - but you did need to tell yourself that it had been interesting, enjoyable, purposeful.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
48eca89
|
A woman's right to choose -- yes, I believed in that, theoretically and actually. Though I also believed in a man's right to be consulted.
|
|
abortion-rights
|
Julian Barnes |
|
bd1bbd6
|
I keep alive our lost private language.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
caa3df3
|
How could I possibly be a better person without her than with her? Later, I thought: but he is just echoing Nietzsche's line about what doesn't kill us making us stronger. And as it happens, I have long considered this epigram particularly specious. There are many things that fail to kill us but weaken us for ever. Look around at those emotionally damaged by mere ordinary life.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
fb0ebd2
|
This is true, and defines the lostness of the grief struck. You constantly report things, so that the loved one 'knows'. You may be aware that you are fooling yourself (though, if aware, are at the same time not fooling yourself), yet you continue. And everything you do, or might achieve thereafter, is thinner, weaker, matters less. There is no echo coming back; no texture, no resonance, no depth of field.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
c8e4f5c
|
pustular berk with the charisma of a plimsole
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
7af9259
|
she wonders whether the Holy Ghost, conventionally represented as a dove, would not be better portrayed as a parrot. Logic is certainly on her side: parrots and Holy Ghosts can speak, whereas doves cannot.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
9285cf8
|
His life had not been wrecked. His heart, yes, his heart had been cauterised. But he had found a way to live, and continued with that life, which had brought him to here. And from here, he had a duty to see himself as he had once been. Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can't change.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
c58297a
|
He also loved candelabra.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
0e9c762
|
Se habia imaginado que, en el mundo moderno, el tiempo y el lugar ya no eran importantes en las historias de amor. Al mirar atras vio que habian desempenado en la suya una funcion mas grande de lo que habia pensado. Habia sucumbido a la antigua, continuada, indeleble ilusion: que de algun modo los amantes estan fuera del tiempo.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
6999cdd
|
An English silence--one in which all the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties--prevailed.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
d26bbe3
|
l'db lf`ly hw m kn `n lHqy'q lnfsy@ wl`Tfy@ w ljtm`y@ km tshyr lyh 'f`l-wrdwd 'f`l-lshkhSyt l'dby@ lmktwb@,lrwy@ hy tTwr lshkhSyt `br lzmn.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
e9b39b3
|
Another piece of appropriated maternal wisdom I remember from this time was this: "If you lower your expectations, you can't be disappointed." This struck me as a dismal approach to life, whether for a forty-five-year-old mother or a twenty-year-old daughter."
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
dc74750
|
Throw off your grief,' such doubters imply, 'and we can all go back to pretending that death doesn't exist, or at least is comfortably far away.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
86ebd54
|
ymknn lbd,mthl,bsw'l ybdw bsyT:m hw ltrykh? - ltrykh 'kdhyb lmntSryn. - rbm ttdhkr kdhlk 'nh 'whm lmhzwmyn 'yD. - ltrykh fTyr@ bSl Gyr mTbwkh,l'nh mkrr,mthyr lltjshw'.lqd r'ynh mr@ tlw l'khr~ 'thn drstn hdh l`m mthl Tbqt lbSl.lHky@ lqdym@ nfsh,lt'rjH byn lkhyn@ wlthwr@ nfsh,lHrb wlslm,lthrw@ wlfqr...lkh. - ltrykh hw dhk lyqyn lntj `n ltq khll ldhkr@ bnqS ltwthyq.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
042637a
|
Here was an entry - a serious one - which he hadn't crossed out in years. He couldn't remember where it came from. He never recorded the writer or the source: he didn't want to be bullied by reputation; truth should stand by itself, clear and unsupported. This one went: 'In my opinion, every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster once you give yourself over to it entirely.' Yes, that deserved to stay. He liked the proper inclusivity of ..
|
|
love
marriage
|
Julian Barnes |
|
3e77b95
|
naperenoto mi bezrazlichie se prev'rna v'v vbeseno unizhenie. V'ztsari se angliisko m'lchanie - takova, prez koeto i dvete strani idealno razbirat vsichki neizrecheni dumi. Legnakh si i se narevakh. Poveche ne se spomena za tozi sluchai.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
a472d5a
|
Learnt how to pass the time. That's one of the things about life. We're all just looking for a place of safety. And if you don't find one, then you have to learn how to pass the time.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
57e5387
|
What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves - the music of our being - which is transformed by some into real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and true and pure enough to drown out the noise of time, is transformed into the whisper of history.
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |
|
25b7a42
|
The government had been talking about sexually transmitted disease. But it was the same with words: they too could be sexually transmitted.
|
|
sex
|
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 |
|
663ada0
|
La principal caracteristica del remordimiento es que no tiene remedio: que ha pasado el tiempo de las disculpas o enmiendas
|
|
|
Julian Barnes |