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f5071d6
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Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.
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words
time
literature
history
reading
books
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Julian Barnes |
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7948c81
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Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?
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Julian Barnes |
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f838581
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Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?
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Julian Barnes |
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265e918
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Irony - The modern mode: either the devil's mark or the snorkel of sanity.
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Julian Barnes |
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b83a20a
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The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections. We lie here in our hospital bed of the present (what nice clean sheets we get nowadays) with a bubble of daily news drip-fed into our arm. We think we know who we are, though we don't quite know why we're here, or how long we shall be force..
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Julian Barnes |
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f45ebb5
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You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...
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Julian Barnes |
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a3da5c8
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This is what those who haven't crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean that they do not exist.
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Julian Barnes |
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f4c6fba
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If you're that clever you can argue yourself into anything.
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Julian Barnes |
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21d6ec8
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Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised.
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tragedy
youth
old-age
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Julian Barnes |
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37759a2
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If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.
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Julian Barnes |
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39d7a49
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You can define a net two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally you would say it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string.
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language
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Julian Barnes |
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85f2bce
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Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling.
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life-story
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Julian Barnes |
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6929cbf
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Remember the botched brothel-visit in L'Education sentimentale and remember its lesson. Do not participate: happiness lies in the imagination, not the act. Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.
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happiness
life
memory
pleasure
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Julian Barnes |
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0b6eab7
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If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that.
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writing
readers
writers
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Julian Barnes |
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c74f7ac
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I've always thought you are what you are and you shouldn't pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you're pretending to be.
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Julian Barnes |
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2e70b73
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It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to.
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Julian Barnes |
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f2a4cfb
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There are two essential kinds of loneliness: that of not having found someone to love, and that of having been deprived of the one you did love. The first kind is worse. Nothing can compare to the loneliness of the soul in adolescence.
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Julian Barnes |
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23bc0a6
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life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision.
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Julian Barnes |
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1e09425
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You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.
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Julian Barnes |
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cfc0503
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When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements ... while remaining heedless of the world's barbarism. I don't say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn't notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young..
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past
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Julian Barnes |
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c72f501
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The next day, when I was sober, I thought again about the three of us, and about time's many paradoxes. For instance: that when we are young and sensitive, we are also at our most hurtful; whereas when the blood begins to slow, when we feel less sharply, when we are more armoured and have learnt how to bear hurt, we tread more carefully.
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Julian Barnes |
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fd8bfe9
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Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65]
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Julian Barnes |
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de2ba5f
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What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favourite perversion? ... I loved Ellen, and i wanted to know the worst. I never provoked her; I was cautious and defensive, as is my habit; I didn't even ask questions; but I wanted to know the worst. Ellen never returned this caress. She was fon..
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Julian Barnes |
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aa3ee52
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lkn lzmn.. kyf y`lmn lzmn fy lbdy@ thm yrbkn. kn nZn 'nn nDjwn fy lwqt ldhy kn amnyn fyh fqT. tSwrn 'nn ntHl~ blmsy'wly@ fy lwqt ldhy kn fyh jbn fqT. m 'smynh wq`y@ tbyn 'nh m hw l Tryq@ ltfdy l'shy bdl mn mwjhth. lzmn.. mnHn zmn kfy wstbdw jmy` qrrtn lmdrws@ b`ny@ mthdy@, wsybdw yqynn nzwt.
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Julian Barnes |
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190abff
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Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.
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writing
writers
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Julian Barnes |
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b93776b
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There's nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there's something wrong with the young who can't be fascinated by a genius.
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Julian Barnes |
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c0bab6d
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I have at times tried to imagine the despair which leads to suicide, attempted to conjure up the slew and slop of darkness in which only death appears as a pinprick of light: in other words, the exact opposite of the normal condition of life.
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Julian Barnes |
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e2bbfae
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It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handbook of composition.
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reality
love
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Julian Barnes |
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81415e8
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And that was all the part of it - the way you were obliged to live. You stifled a groan, you lied about your love, you deceived your legal wife, and all in the name of honour. That was the damned paradox of it - in order to behave well, you have to behave badly.
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life
paradox
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Julian Barnes |
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f2bf8c8
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Hyn tkwn fy l`shrynt Ht~ n knt mshwsh wGyr mt'kd mn 'hdfk wGytk , fn ldyk Hs qwy bm`n~ lHy@ nfsh , wbmhytk fy lHy@ wbm ymkn 'n tSyr `lyh . fym b`d .. fym b`d hnk lmzyd mn `dm lyqyn , lmzyd mn ltdkhl , lmzyd mn ltrj` , lmzyd mn ldhkryt lzy'f@ . fy lmDy ymknk 'n ttdhkr Hytk lqSyr@ b'kmlh , fym b`d tSbH ldhkr@ shyy' mn lkhrq wlrq` . fhy l~ Hd m tshbh lSndwq l'swd fy lTy'rt ldhy ysjl m yHdth fy Hl@ ltHTm . n lm yHdth shyy' khT' , fn lshryT ymHw..
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Julian Barnes |
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a7e2a7b
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Initially, you continue doing what you used to do with her, out of familiarity, love, the need for a pattern. Soon, you realise the trap you are in: caught between repeating what you did with her, but without her, and so missing her; or doing new things, things you never did with her, and so missing her differently. You feel sharply the loss of shared vocabulary, of tropes, teases, short cuts, injokes, sillinesses, faux rebukes, amatory foo..
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Julian Barnes |
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49c1bad
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we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death
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Julian Barnes |
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44ad390
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His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.
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Julian Barnes |
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e93fc6d
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When we're young, everyone over the age of thirty looks middle-aged, everyone over fifty antique. And time, as it goes by, confirms that we weren't that wrong. Those little age differentials, so crucial and so gross when we are young erode. We end up all belonging to the same category, that of the non-young. I've never much minded this myself.
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middle-age
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Julian Barnes |
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41ec6d2
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Remorse, etymologically, is the action of biting again: that's what the feeling does to you. Imagine the strength of the bite when I reread my words. They seemed like some ancient curse I had forgotten even uttering.
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Julian Barnes |
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85e17ea
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Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?
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Julian Barnes |
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daea7fd
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God knows you can have complication and difficulty without any compensating depth or seriousness
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Julian Barnes |
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43f5a3f
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Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter?
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youth
colour
ageing
perspective
excitement
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Julian Barnes |
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7f0029f
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In an ideal world, a young man should not be an ironical person. At that age, irony prevents growth, stunts the imagination. It is best to start life in a cheerful and open state of mind, believing in others, being optimistic, being frank with everyone about everything. And then, as one comes to understand things and people better, to develop a sense of irony. The natural progression of human life is from optimism to pessimism; and a sense ..
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Julian Barnes |
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666e155
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Anyway... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me, so I decide to settle myself against the soft zigzag of her body. As I move and start to nestle my shin against a calf whose muscles are loosened by sleep, she sense what I'm doing, and without waking reaches up with her left hand and pulls the hair off her shoulders on the top of her head, leaving me her ba..
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Julian Barnes |
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f476d90
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He always thought that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief anf guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.
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death-and-dying
illness
marriage
death
love
death-of-a-loved-one
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Julian Barnes |
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698bd7a
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Most people, in my opinion, steal much of what they are. If they didn't what poor items they would be.
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personality
stealing
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Julian Barnes |
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6b9b86e
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Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary
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Julian Barnes |
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12daf33
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Listen to them again: 'I love you.' Subject, verb, object: the unadorned, impregnable sentence. The subject is a short word, implying the self-effacement of the lover. The verb is longer but unambiguous, a demonstrative moment as the tongue flicks anxiously away from the palate to release the vowel. The object, like the subject, has no consonants, and is attained by pushing the lips forward as if for a kiss. 'I love you.' How serious, how w..
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love
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Julian Barnes |