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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| dc739bc | Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? | time watch | Julian Barnes | |
| 3729c23 | When we killed - or exiled - God, we also killed ourselves. Did we notice that sufficiently at the time? No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren't going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off the branch we were sitting on. And the view from there, from that height - even if it was only the illusion of a view - wasn't so bad. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 26b59b9 | Our parents thought we might be corrupted by one another into becoming whatever it was they most feared: an incorrigible masturbator, a winsome homosexual, a recklessly impregnatory libertine. On our behalf they dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behaviour of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl. How far their anxieties outran our experience. | growing-up parents | Julian Barnes | |
| 6e45a0f | He gave the impression that he believed in things. We did too--it was just that we wanted to believe in our own things, rather than what had been decided for us. Hence what we thought of as our cleansing scepticism. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 1b45b5d | When we're onstage we're not literature, we're sitcom. You have to have catchphrases. | Julian Barnes | ||
| a79b581 | There is the question of accumulation (...) just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 12b53e2 | 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? | Julian Barnes | ||
| 85cb434 | How come I can't make her happy, how come she can't make me happy? Simple: the atomic reaction you expect isn't taking place, the beam with which you are bombarding the particles is on the wrong wavelength. | Julian Barnes | ||
| d0efd30 | zmn dr Hkhm tthbytkhnndh `ml nmykhnd blkhh byshtr Hlt Hll drd. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 86922de | You may say, But wasn't this the Sixties? Yes, but only for some people, only in certain parts of the country. | the-sixties | Julian Barnes | |
| 4affd5a | The time-deniers say: forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on. 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. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 06a3562 | The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden.. | writers writing | Julian Barnes | |
| 19f3f86 | But you find yourself repeating, "They grow up so quickly, don't they?" when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays." | Julian Barnes | ||
| d874c7b | He took his own life" is the phrase; but Adrian also took charge of his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands--and then out of them. How few of us--we that remain--can say that we have done the same? We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the .. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 515e2de | You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and so on. Your winnings accumulate. But do your losses? Not at the racetrack--there, you just lose your original stake. But in life? Perhaps here different rules apply. You bet on a relationship, it fails; you go on to the next relationship, it fails too: and maybe what you lose is not two simple minus sums but the multiple of what you staked. Th.. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 455cde6 | Oliver used to have a theory he called Love, etc.: in other words the world divides into people for whom love is everything and the rest of life is a mere 'etc.,' and people who don't value love enough and find the most exciting part of life is the 'etc. | love | Julian Barnes | |
| 2e33922 | If I can't be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left. | Julian Barnes | ||
| bc27008 | The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down? | Julian Barnes | ||
| dfd0904 | This [...] isn`t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn`t always the same as what you witnessed. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 908d542 | We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history is merely another literary genre: the past is autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 23f8845 | Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? | Julian Barnes | ||
| 6b2d9ae | It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible. | Julian Barnes | ||
| 20216cf | Music -- good music, great music -- had a hard, irreducible purity to it. It might be bitter and despairing and pessimistic, but it could never be cynical. If music is tragic, those with asses' ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something. | cynical cynicism despair despairing music pessimistic purity tragic | Julian Barnes | |
| d1cce3d | The engineers of human souls'. There were two main problems. The first was that many people did not want their souls to be egineered, thank you very much. They were content with their souls being left as they were when they had come into this world; and when you tried to lead them, they resisted. Come to this free open-air concert, comrade. Oh, we really think you should attend. Yes, of course, it is voluntary, but it might be a mistake if .. | 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 conv.. | julian-barnes love love-story meaningful relationships the-only-story true-love unrequited-love validation | Julian Barnes | |
| d049eae | I don't want a well-ordered life.... I would die from boredom in a fortnight. | Suzanne Enoch | ||
| cbaa5a5 | So you intend to spend the remainder of your life whoring, drinking, wagering, and being as outrageous as you can manage?" Bram shook himself. He made it a point to be serious as little as possible, and neither did he want to argue with two newly married men about the meruts of being leg-shackled."Please Phin," he said aloud. "I would never think so small. You know my ultimate goal is to lower the standards of morality enough that everythin.. | Suzanne Enoch | ||
| 4f619aa | Sin was a powerful temptation, indeed | Suzanne Enoch | ||
| 97e60ad | I wish you'd tell me when we're having friends over for luncheon." "I would, if they would tell me." | Suzanne Enoch | ||
| 403f9fb | The faithful dog is kicked, and no matter how the spider weaves, he is never loved. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 58b1ac5 | The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wineskin. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 07d7ffd | The best answer I've heard came in a sermon given by an elderly priest many years ago. He was traveling in the Middle East and was overwhelmed by the majesty of the Persian rugs he saw. Those gorgeous creations so skillfully woven into such beautiful designs. One day he was in a shop where those rugs were on display. He walked behind one that was hanging on hooks from the ceiling. Looking at it from behind, he was shocked to behold a confus.. | Mary Higgins Clark | ||
| a59edbe | Our children begin by loving us; as they grow up they judge us; sometimes they forgive us. | Mary Higgins Clark | ||
| 244fe2c | In most marriages, one of the couple is more in love than the other, and it's best if it's the man. The marriage will have a better chance of going the whole way. | Mary Higgins Clark | ||
| 95a9304 | I Chose to be an active participant in my life rather than a spectator. | Robin McGraw | ||
| caa3707 | We have good news and bad news. The good news is that the dismal vision of human sexuality reflected in the standard narrative is mistaken. Men have not evolved to be deceitful cads, nor have millions of years shaped women into lying, two-timing gold-diggers. But the bad news is that the amoral agencies of evolution have created in us a species with a secret it just can't keep. Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably.. | Christopher Ryan | ||
| db23b57 | The snow fell steadily, cloaking all the world in white. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 66d6d6d | You are in difficulty," she observed. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 1c426d3 | Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 9023a94 | His wits were coming back to him, however slowly. That was good. His wits were all he had. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 089da8f | The Targaryens wed brothers and sisters for three hundred years to keep the blood line pure. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 8615452 | The sword was not the kingdom, he says. | sword | George R.R. Martin | |
| 5757cce | If instead you feed the wolf and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flocks when the pack comes ravening. | George R.R. Martin | ||
| 62d96e7 | Si no tiene nada que temer, un cobarde no se distingue en nada de un valiente. Y todos cumplimos con nuestro deber cuando no nos cuesta nada. | game-of-thrones george-r-r-martin juego-de-tronos maestre-aemon | George R. R. Martin |