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00af0d7
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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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Julian Barnes |
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73b98f5
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The, 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 may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
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Julian Barnes |
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76b04c7
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The heart of my life; the life of my heart.
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Julian Barnes |
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aa19ba9
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Studies of cancer patients show that attitudes of mind have very little effect on clinical outcome. We may say we are fighting cancer, but cancer is merely fighting us; we may think we have beaten it, when it has only gone away to regroup. It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to. And so, perhaps, with grief. We imagine we have battled against it, been purposeful, overcome sorrow, scrubbed the ru..
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Julian Barnes |
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d15de03
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If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.
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present
past
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Julian Barnes |
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ed93642
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And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us of time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing - until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.
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time
memory
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Julian Barnes |
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4576623
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You would think, wouldn't you, that if you were the child of a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better than average marriage yourself - either through some genetic inheritance or because you'd learnt from example? But it doesn't seem to work like that. So perhaps you need the opposite example - to see mistakes in order not to make them yourself. Except this would mean that the best way for parents to ensure their children have happy..
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Julian Barnes |
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71d9bba
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You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers.
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empathy-psychology
narratology
narrative
stories
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Julian Barnes |
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0279281
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The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.
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limitations
writing
writers
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Julian Barnes |
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01b7c20
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Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.
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Julian Barnes |
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dec179c
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You've got to be responsible for your own happiness - you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.
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Julian Barnes |
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5597096
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Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--it's not useful--to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. [p. 69]
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Julian Barnes |
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d67b8af
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When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.
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youth
humor
life
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Julian Barnes |
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9effad8
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But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person
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Julian Barnes |
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aa96209
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But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.
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Julian Barnes |
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acebf2a
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Next to not living with those one loves, the worst torture is living with those one doesn't love.
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Julian Barnes |
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6ab2416
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Life always refused simplicity.
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simplicity
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Julian Barnes |
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a90a88b
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Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.
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words
literature
reading
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Julian Barnes |
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e6919fc
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And by that time he had made the most terrifying discovery of his life, one which probably cast a shadow over all his subsequent relationships: the realization that most love, even the most ardent and the most sincere, can, given the correct assault, curdle into a mixture of pity and anger.
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Julian Barnes |
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496cfaf
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For me, death is the one appalling fact which defines life; unless you are constantly aware of it, you cannot begin to understand what life is about; unless you know and feel that the days of wine and roses are limited, that the wine will madeirize and the roses turn brown in their stinking water before all are thrown out for ever- including the jug- there is no context to such pleasures and interests as come your way on the road to the gra..
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Julian Barnes |
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7964300
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Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore su..
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past
life
parents-and-children
memory
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Julian Barnes |
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4ad2761
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Rather, what happened to human illusions was that they crumbled, they withered away. It was a long and wearisome process, like a toothache reaching far into the soul. But you can pull out a tooth and it will be gone. Illusions, however, even when dead, continue to rot and stink within us. We cannot escape their taste and smell. We carry them around with us all the time.
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time
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Julian Barnes |
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54aad7c
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Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment - when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and away with yourself as well. But to be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn't ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yours..
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Julian Barnes |
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f677324
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Sometimes you find the panel, but it doesn't open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you've looked. That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to know everything and those who don't. This search is a sign of love I maintain.
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Julian Barnes |
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ea46161
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And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]
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Julian Barnes |
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81a8241
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And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.
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life
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Julian Barnes |
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75dc5da
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If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the brain told you now about what it claimed had happened then would be coloured by what had happened in between. It was like a country remembering its history: the past was never just the past, it was what made the present able to live with itself.
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the-past
memory
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Julian Barnes |
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bc497cc
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Religion decays, the icon remains; a narrative is forgotten, yet its representation still magnetizes.
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religion
decay
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Julian Barnes |
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007f0fc
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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. So when this strange thing happened--when these new memories suddenly came upon me--it was as if, for that moment, time had been placed in reverse. As if, for that moment, the river ran upstream.
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Julian Barnes |
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38e4c27
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This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'...
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time
history
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Julian Barnes |
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7c0b9f3
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Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that's been more or less agreed upon. Or perhaps it's that same paradox again: the history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it's the most deliquescent. We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history ..
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Julian Barnes |
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595fa32
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In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that 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. ... Alex showed me a clipping from t..
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suicide
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Julian Barnes |
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6e2bae8
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Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes for both.
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Julian Barnes |
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ef16c60
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Did you leave me because of me?" "No," she said. "I left you because of us."
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Julian Barnes |
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3f06b45
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You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may crash and burn, or burn and crash. But sometimes, something new is made, and then the world is changed. Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves. Together, they see further, and they see more clearly.
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Julian Barnes |
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3942be7
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Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence till morning. I fall asleep more grudgingly, thrashing at the waves, either reluctant to let a good day depart or still bitching about a bad one. Different currents run through our spells of unconsciousness.
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sleep
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Julian Barnes |
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54345d4
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That's the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don't, but between those who want to know everything and those who don't. This search is a sign of love, I maintain. It's similar with books. Not quite the same, of course (it never is); but similar. If you quite enjoy a writer's work, if you turn the page approvingly yet don't mind being interrupted, then you tend to like that author unthinkingly. ..
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Julian Barnes |
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2086c90
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Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.
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Julian Barnes |
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5de4033
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For most of us, the first experience of love, even if it doesn't work out-perhaps especially when it doesn't work out-promises that here is the thing that validates, that vindicates life.
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Julian Barnes |
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0cd6ba9
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And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you'd do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards you; place your crossed wrists over your heart (the middle of your chest, anyway); then move your hands outwards a short distance, and open them towards the object of your love. It's just as eloquent as speech.
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Julian Barnes |
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e02b432
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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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b060c6c
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But I don't remember. I won't remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting.
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Julian Barnes |
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82b430d
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Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that meant something new was being born. Does this make any sense if we apply it to our individual lives? To die when something new is being born - even if that something new is our very own self? Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappointments, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of ..
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Julian Barnes |
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e996dc3
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Me and my books, in the same apartment: like a gherkin in its vinegar.
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reading
flaubert-s-parrot
julian-barnes
book-quotes
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Julian Barnes |